This paper examines the causes and consequences of hedge fund investments in exchange traded funds (ETFs) using U.S. data from 1998 to 2018. The data indicate that transient hedge funds and quasi-indexer hedge funds are substantially more likely to invest in ETFs. Unexpected hedge fund inflows...

We provide the first quantitative survey of the empirical literature on hedge fund per- formance. We examine the impact of potential biases on the reported results. Empirical analysis in prior studies has been plagued by fragmentation of underlying data and by lim- ited consensus on how hedge...

Hedge funds have become an important part of the financial sector. The development of the hedge funds in the Nordic countries has been rather robust. Therefore, it is important to identify the determinants of the hedge fund performance and isolate the managerial performance, i.e., the Jensen's...

Two activists with correlated private positions in a firm's stock, trade sequentially before simultaneously exerting effort that determines the firm's value. We document the existence of a novel linear equilibrium in which an activist's trades have positive sensitivity to her block size, but...

This paper investigates the nature of volatility spillovers between stock returns and hedge funds returns in twelve Asia Pacific countries in the 1997-2018 period. The sample period encompasses sub periods, 1997 Asia financial crisis, 2008 Global financial crisis and 2010 Eurozone crisis; these...

The subprime crisis was quite damaging for hedge funds. Using the local projection method (Jordà 2004, 2005, 2009), we forecast the dynamic responses of the betas of hedge fund strategies to macroeconomic and financial shocks-especially volatility and illiquidity shocks-over the subprime crisis...

I analyze hedge fund activism within a simple behavioral finance framework where managers are excessively optimistic about their firm's long-run prospects, the market is efficient, and hedge fund activists are excessively pessimistic as a result of a behavioral winner's curse. This generates a...

One of the major concerns in todays’ world of economic finance, especially investments in asset classes like stocks and bonds, is whether the returns on these asset classes are linear or non-linear. To test the linearity behaviour, this paper employs the Granger causality test (Granger, 1969)...

Using a novel dataset of media sentiment concerning macroeconomic developments, we show that sentiment for economic growth, inflation, unemployment, and bond prices predict hedge fund returns. We blend these proxies with social disorder and political sentiment to create a broad macro sentiment...

This paper analyses gender differences in hedge fund (HF) performance persistence using parametric and non-parametric risk-adjusted-performance persistence indicators. We find evidence consistent with performance persistence, which in relative (risk-adjusted) terms, is more pronounced amongst...

This paper introduces a new trading strategy in investment: to include the asset (Asset A) with the highest mean, the asset (Asset B) that stochastically dominates many other assets, and the asset (Asset C) with the smallest standard deviation in their portfolio to form the portfolio in the...

We provide the first quantitative survey of the empirical literature on hedge fund performance. We examine the impact of potential biases on the reported results. Using a sample of 1,019 intercept terms from regressions of hedge fund returns on risk factors (the "alpha") collected from 74...

Hedge funds can subsequently amend their originally reported 13F quarterly holdings using restatements. We conduct the first systematic analysis of such filings, which are as common as confidential filings (used by funds to delay holdings disclosures), but affect three times as many stocks....

The random assignment of judges to court cases promotes fairness, minimizes forum shopping, and is routinely exploited for causal identification by economists. Analyzing U.S. corporate bankruptcy filings between 2010 and 2020, we provide the first evidence that assignment is not random, but...

Financial intermediaries play a key role in the formation of asset prices. More specifically, the increasing importance of non-bank financial intermediaries has raised new questions about the risks that hedge funds pose to the financial system. We focus on the role that changes in hedge fund...

We use a novel fund-level measure to identify 877 retail hedge funds. On average, retail funds do not underperform, either on an absolute basis or relative to institutional funds. In the cross-section, 14.3% of retail funds produce positive alpha and performance is predictable: funds with low...

This paper produces multiple fund-of-funds’ portfolios based on sorting and a novel non-parametric approach to lend in-depth insights into the extent hedge fund returns display higher order (non-linear) persistence patterns. By exploiting monthly data from Hedge Fund Research Database between...

Hedge fund activism refers to the phenomenon where hedge fund investors acquire a strict minority block of shares in a target firm and then attempt to pressure management for changes in corporate policies and governance with the aim to improve firm performance. This study provides an updated...

I present a model in which hedge fund managers maximize their expected compensation subject to leverage constraints. This allows me to explore the impact of hedge funds’ prototypical contract structure on their dynamic risk allocations and on asset prices in general. One implication of the...

Much work in finance is devoted to identifying characteristics of firms, such as measures of fundamentals and beliefs, that explain differences in asset prices and expected returns. We develop a framework to quantitatively trace the connection between valuations, expected returns, and...

This study examines the role of market disagreement in explaining the cross-section of hedge fund performance. In a market where disagreement fluctuates, skilled arbitrageurs may employ different trading strategies to exploit the mispricing caused by disagreement and short-sale constraints....

We find that minority operated funds deliver higher alphas, Sharpe ratios, and information ratios than do non-minority operated funds. Moreover, minority fund managers attended more selective schools, worked at higher status investment banks, and are more likely to hold post-graduate degrees....

This paper examines the causes and consequences of hedge fund investments in exchange traded funds (ETFs) using U.S. data from 1998 to 2018. The data indicate that transient hedge funds and quasi-indexer hedge funds are substantially more likely to invest in ETFs. Unexpected hedge fund inflows...

The study reveals that the COVID-19 crisis has had a strong but one-off negative impact on the hedge fund industry. It also shows that during the new coronavirus pandemic, the main components of the hedge fund industry achieved only partially their main investment goal, i.e. they as a whole...

This paper finds that remunerative benefits accrue to managers of new hedge funds launched after the implementation of the Volcker Rule (section 610 of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act) if their previous employer is a systemically important US bank. We attribute this phenomenon to changes in how...

As a result of recent Treasury regulations, investment partnerships, such as hedge funds, might be required to allocate nonrecourse liabilities to their limited partners (LPs). This allocation of nonrecourse liabilities could result in recognition of capital gains by LPs when they contribute...

We study the long-run outcomes associated with hedge funds' compensation structure. Over a 22-year period, the aggregate effective incentive fee rate is 2.5 times the average contractual rate (i.e., around 50% instead of 20%). Overall, investors collected 36 cents for every dollar earned on...

This paper investigates the relationship between economic policy uncertainty (EPU), an index capturing newspaper coverage of policy-related issues, and momentum profits. Momentum remains an unexplained anomaly. Our findings reveal a statistically negative association between EPU and hedge...

While it is established that idiosyncratic volatility has a negative impact on the cross-section of future stock returns, the relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and future hedge fund returns is largely unexplored. We document that hedge funds with high idiosyncratic volatility...

This paper argues that the key mechanisms protecting retail investors' financial stake in their portfolio investments are indirect. They do not rely on actions by the investors or by any private actor directly charged with looking after investors' interests. Rather, they are provided by the...