Multidivisional and decentralized firms often operate inefficiently. In most cases, central management's instruments to influence its branches' behavior are limited. Although relative performance evaluation has been argued to be of great use in defining incentive mechanisms, such approaches...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the implications of the risk versus characteristic debate from the perspective of a mean-variance investor. Design/methodology/approach: Expected returns and the variance-covariance matrix are estimated based on various characteristic and risk...

Since the subprime crisis, portfolios based on risk diversification are of great interest to both academic researchers and market practitioners. They have also been employed by several asset management firms and their performance appears promising. Since they do not rely on estimates of expected...