Traditionally, “real” assets such as inflation-indexed bonds, commodities and real estate were thought to have correlate well with inflation and thus provide protection against rising price levels. But many of these assets turn out not to be that “real.” While a single real bond provides...

Mean-variance investing is all about diversification. Diversification considers assets holistically and exploits the interaction of assets with each other, rather than viewing assets in isolation. Holding a diversified portfolio allows investors to increase expected returns while reducing risks....

After taking into account biases induced by infrequent trading and selection, it is unlikely that illiquid asset classes have higher risk-adjusted returns than traditional liquid stock and bond markets. On the other hand, there are significant illiquidity premiums within asset classes. Portfolio...

Using a transaction cost model, and an assumption for the smart beta premium observed in data, we estimate the capacity of a particular implementation of momentum, quality, value, size, minimum volatility, and a multi-factor combination. For a given trading horizon, we can find the fund size...

Municipal (muni) bonds are risky and trade in illiquid markets, and both effects serve to raise muni yields relative to Treasuries. On the other hand, the tax exemption of muni bonds tends to lower their yields. We decompose the muni yield spread into credit, liquidity, and tax components....

About once a quarter. We compute optimal tactical asset allocation (TAA) policies over equities and bonds when both asset returns are predictable. By varying how often the weights are reset, we estimate the benefits and costs of different frequencies of TAA decisions. Tactical tilts taking...

Factor investing asks: how well can a particular investor weather hard times relative to the average investor? Answering helps her reap long-run factor premiums by embracing risks that lose money during bad times, but make up for it the rest of the time with attractive rewards. When factor...

We introduce a methodology to estimate the historical time series of returns to investment in private equity. The approach requires only an unbalanced panel of cash contributions and distributions accruing to limited partners, and is robust to sparse data. We decompose private equity returns...

American university and college endowments now hold close to one-third of their portfolios in private equity and hedge funds. We estimate the implied beliefs of endowments about alternative assets' returns relative to equities and bonds. At the end of 2012, the typical endowment believes that...

Municipal bonds are often "advance refunded." Bonds that are not yet callable are defeasedby creating a trust that pays the interest up to the call date, and pays the call price. Newdebt, generally at lower interest rates, is issued to fund the trust. Issuing new securitiesto fund payments on...