This paper estimates hedge fund and mutual fund exposure to newly proposed measures of macroeconomic risk that are interpreted as measures of economic uncertainty. We find that the resulting uncertainty betas explain a significant proportion of the cross-sectional dispersion in hedge fund...

We study hedge funds that imposed discretionary liquidity restrictions (DLRs) on investor shares during the financial crisis. DLRs prolong fund life, but impose liquidity costs on investors, creating a potential conflict of interest. Ostensibly, funds establish DLRs to limit performance-driven...

This paper provides benchmarks for monitoring costs and evaluates the net returns to shareholder activism. I model activism as a sequential decision process consisting of demand negotiations, board representation, and proxy contest and estimate the costs of each activism stage. A campaign ending...

A discontinuity, or kink, at zero in the hedge fund net return distribution has been interpreted as evidence of managers manipulating returns to avoid showing small losses. Instead, we propose alternative explanations for this phenomenon. In particular, we show that incentive fees can...

We explore a new dimension of fund managers' timing ability by examining whether they can time market liquidity through adjusting their portfolios' market exposure as aggregate liquidity conditions change. Using a large sample of hedge funds, we find strong evidence of liquidity timing. A...

This paper investigates mega hedge fund management companies that collectively manage over 50% of the industry's assets, incorporating previously unavailable data from those that do not report to commercial databases. We find similarities among mega firms that report performance to commercial...

We find that patient traders profit from the predictable, flow-induced trades of mutual funds. In anticipation of a 1%-of-volume change in mutual fund flows into a stock next quarter, the institutions in the same 13F category as hedge funds trade 0.29–0.45% of volume in the current quarter. A...

This paper investigates the extent to which market risk, residual risk, and tail risk explain the cross-sectional dispersion in hedge fund returns. The paper introduces a comprehensive measure of systematic risk (SR) for individual hedge funds by breaking up total risk into systematic and...

To identify capacity constraints in hedge funds and simultaneously gauge how well-informed hedge fund investors are, we need measures of investor demand that do not affect deployed hedge fund assets. Using new data on investor interest from a secondary market for hedge funds, this paper verifies...

We study the common equity and equity option positions of hedge fund investment advisors over the 1999–2006 period. We find that hedge funds' stock positions predict future returns and that option positions predict both volatility and returns on the underlying stock. A quarterly tracking...