Existing studies of household stock trading using administrative data offer conflicting results: discount brokerage accounts exhibit excessive trading, while retirement accounts show inactivity. This paper uses population-wide data from PSID and SCF to examine the overall extent of household...

In this paper, we analyze the economic value of predicting index returns as well as volatility. On the basis of fairly simple linear models, estimated recursively, we produce genuine out-of-sample forecasts for the return on the Samp;P 500 index and its volatility. Using monthly data from 1954...

Believers in the law of small numbers tend to overinfer the outcome of a random process after a small series of observations. They believe that small samples replicate the probability distribution properties of the population. We provide empirical evidence indicating that investors are...

We explore the flow-performance interrelation of hedge funds by separating the investment and divestment decisions of investors using a regime switching model. We report three previously undocumented features in hedge fund data. First, we find a weak inflow-performance relation at quarterly...

Hedge funds databases are typically subject to high attrition rates because of fund termination and self-selection. Even when all funds are included up to their last available return, one cannot prevent that ex post conditioning biases affect standard estimates of performance persistence. In...

Copulas offer financial risk managers a powerful tool to model the dependence between the different elements of a portfolio and are preferable to the traditional, correlation-based approach. In this paper we show the importance of selecting an accurate copula for risk management. We extend...

Using monthly return data of more than 6,400 US equity mutual funds we investigate short-run performance persistence over the period 1984-2003. We sort funds into rank portfolios based on past performance, and evaluate the portfolios' out-of-sample performance. To cope with short ranking...

Systemic crises can have grave consequences for investors in international equity markets, because it causes the risk-return trade-off to deteriorate severely for a longer period. In this paper we propose a novel approach to include the possibility of systemic crises in asset allocation...

A wide range of empirical biases hampers hedge fund databases. In this paper we focus upon survival-related biases and disentangle look-ahead biases due to self-selection of funds and due to fund termination. Self-selection arises because funds voluntarily report their information to data...

Systemic crises can have grave consequences for investors in international equity markets, because they cause the risk-return trade-off to deteriorate severely for a longer period. We propose a novel approach to include the possibility of systemic crises in asset allocation decisions. By...