We are the first to investigate the cross-section of stock returns in the new emerging equity markets, the so-called frontier emerging markets. Our unique survivorship-bias free data set consists of more than 1,400 stocks over the period 1997 to 2008 and covers 24 of the most liquid frontier...

This paper studies the interaction of the five most well-established calendar effects: the Halloween effect, January effect, turn-of-the-month effect, weekend effect and holiday effect. We find that Halloween and turn-of-the month (TOM) are the strongest effects fully diminishing the other three...

The portfolio of the average investor contains important information for strategic asset allocation purposes. This portfolio shows the relative value of all assets according to the market crowd, which one could interpret as a benchmark or the optimal portfolio for the average investor. We...

European index funds and exchange-traded funds underperform their benchmarks by 50 to 150 basis points per annum. The explanatory power of dividend withholding taxes as a determinant of this underperformance is at least at par with fund expenses. Dividend taxes also explain performance...

Least absolute deviations (LAD) estimation of linear time-series models is considered under conditional heteroskedasticity and serial correlation. The limit theory of the LAD estimator is obtained without assuming the finite density condition for the errors that is required in standard LAD...

Many investors do not want to finance morally objectionable activities with their money, such as smoking. But is investing in the shares of tobacco companies the same as financing the tobacco business? Analyzing two decades of data we find that investors in tobacco shares have not provided any...

In this paper we critically examine the novel concept of fundamental indexation. We argue that fundamental indexation is by definition nothing more than an (elegant) value strategy, because the weights of stocks in a fundamental index and a market capitalization-weighted index only differ as a...

We present an asset allocation framework for pension funds in which they can take pension liability risk and uncertainty about future expected asset returns explicitly into account. This framework recognized the liability hedging properties of assets that correlate positively with changes in the...

We investigate the ability of mutual fund managers to successfully rotate between investment styles based on characteristics such as market capitalization, valuation ratios, and price momentum. We find evidence in favor of market timing among a group of 153 US-based mutual funds with a...

We compare the results from dynamic return-based style analysis with analyst reports about manager behaviour in the Fidelity Magellan Fund. We observe that much information about the fund's investment style can be gathered from investment returns only. We also compare the results from our...