What makes futures hedge funds fail? The common ingredient is over betting and not being diversified in some bad scenarios that can lead to disaster. Once troubles arise, it is difficult to take the necessary actions that eliminate the problem. Moreover, many hedge fund operators tend not to...

This paper examines the concept of systemic risk and provides an intuitive account of the economic thought on systems and the development of the notion of systemic risk. It is illustrated by putting the ideas of system, systemic risk and endogenous risk in a historial perspective.

I document how the organizational form of a mutual fund aects its investment strategies. I show that centralized funds tilt their portfolios to hard information com- panies whereas decentralized funds tilt their portfolios to soft information companies. I also show that the investments of...

Current approaches to asset-liability management employ a sequence of distinct procedures to value liabilities and determine the asset allocation. First, a discount rate that is usually dic-tated by accounting standards is used to value liabilities. Second, the asset allocation is determined by...

The theory of equalizing differences suggests that employer provided pension benefits should be compensated by reduced wage benefits for an employee’s given produc-tivity potential. This paper presents an empirical analysis of compensating wage differentials for occupational pension scheme...

This paper considers the asset-allocation strategies open to members of defined- contribution pension plans. We investigate a model that incorporates three sources of risk: asset risk and salary (or labour-income) risk in the accumulation phase; and interest-rate risk at the point of retirement....

This paper examines persistence over time in the performance of fund managers responsible for making the investment decisions of UK pension funds. Previous work on UK pension funds found little evidence of fund manager persistence, but we argue that this may have been due to survivorship bias in...

One can consider the concept of market neutrality for hedge funds as having breadth and depth: breadth reflects the number of market risks to which a fund is neutral, while depth reflects the completeness of the neutrality of the fund to market risks. We focus on market neutrality depth, and...