We examine the performance of the offshore hedge fund industry over the period 1989 through 1995 using a database that includes defunct as well as currently operating funds. The industry is characterized by high attrition rates of funds and little evidence of differential manager skill. We...

We examine whether hot hands exist among hedge fund managers. In measuring performance persistence, we use hedge fund style benchmarks. This allows us to identify managers with valuable skills, and also to control for option-like features inherent in returns from hedge fund strategies. We take...

We study the long-run outcomes associated with hedge funds' compensation structure. Over a 22-year period, the aggregate effective incentive fee rate is 2.5 times the average contractual rate (i.e., around 50% instead of 20%). Overall, investors collected 36 cents for every dollar earned on...

We propose and implement a procedure to dynamically hedge climate change risk. To create our hedge target, we extract innovations from climate news series that we construct through textual analysis of high-dimensional data on newspaper coverage of climate change. We then use a mimicking...

The popular perception is that hedge funds follow a reasonably well defined market-neutral investment style. While this long-short investment strategy may have characterized the first hedge funds, today hedge funds are a reasonably heterogeneous group. They are better defined in terms of their...

Hedge fund managers are compensated via management fees on the assets under management (AUM) and incentive fees indexed to the high-water mark (HWM). We study the effects of managerial skills (alpha) and compensation on dynamic leverage choices and the valuation of fees and investors' payoffs....

We investigate the leverage of hedge funds in the time series and cross section. Hedge fund leverage is counter-cyclical to the leverage of listed financial intermediaries and decreases prior to the start of the financial crisis in mid-2007. Hedge fund leverage is lowest in early 2009 when the...

We document that the risks and pre-fee returns of broad hedge fund indices can be accurately matched with simple equity index put writing strategies, which provide monthly liquidity and complete transparency over their state-contingent payoff profiles. This nonlinear risk exposure combines with...

We survey more than 200 private equity (PE) managers from firms with $1.9 trillion of assets under management (AUM) about their portfolio performance, decisionmaking and activities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Given that PE managers have significant incentives to maximize value, their actions...

This paper presents a thorough evaluation of target date funds for the period 2010-2020. These funds have grown enormously in assets, reaching $1.4 trillion by the end of 2019. They account for approximately 24 percent of all of the assets in 401(k) accounts. The paper reports on the results of...