Short sellers are perceived as informed, sophisticated investors. Yet little is known about their actual performance and trading strategies. Using a novel, hand-collected data set of daily position disclosures in Europe, we identify the entry, change, and exit dates of large short-sale positions...

This paper investigates empirically whether uncertainty about volatility of the market portfolio can explain the performance of hedge funds both in the cross-section and over time. We measure uncertainty about volatility of the market portfolio via volatility of aggregate volatility (VOV) and...

This paper investigates empirically whether uncertainty about the expected returns on the market portfolio can explain the performance of hedge funds both in the cross-section and over time. We measure uncertainty via volatility of aggregate volatility (VOV) and construct an investable version...

We study whether hedge funds make charitable donations to further their business interests. We find that donations are driven by poor fund flows and performance. Post-donation, donor funds experience lower outflows compared to matched non-donors. One-off donations and donations to charities...

Using 13F position valuations, we show that hedge fund advisors intentionally mismark their stock positions. We document manipulation even after eliminating issues inherent in the pricing of illiquid securities. Hedge fund advisors mark their positions up (down) following poor (good) performance...

This paper studies the “confidential holdings” of institutional investors, especially hedge funds, where the quarter-end equity holdings are disclosed with a significant delay through amendments to the Form 13F. Our evidence supports hiding private information as the dominant motive for...

This paper is a first study to formally analyze the biases related to self-reporting in the hedge funds databases by matching the quarterly equity holdings of a complete list of 13F-filing hedge fund companies to the union of five major commercial databases of self-reporting hedge funds between...

Hedge funds are fundamentally exposed to equity volatility, skewness, and kurtosis risks based on the systematic pattern and significant spread in alphas from the existing models that do not control for the higher-moment risks. The spread and pattern in alphas do not disappear with bootstrap...

We examine the determinants and consequences of changes in hedge fund fee structures. We show that fee changes are asymmetric with much greater incidence of fee increases compared to fee decreases. We find that managers of younger and smaller funds are more likely to increase fees after good...

Using a comprehensive hedge fund database, we examine the role of managerial incentives and discretion in hedge fund performance. Hedge funds with greater managerial incentives, proxied by the delta of the option-like incentive fee contracts, higher levels of managerial ownership, and the...