In this paper, we investigate why the same hedge fund may report different performance measures in different places. We find that auditing plays an important role in explaining this difference. Although majority hedge funds state they have auditors, a significant proportion of hedge funds are...

Uncertainty about length of life, longevity risk, is a growing financial problem for pension funds and annuity providers. They would like to transfer longevity risk away to institutions better placed to deal with it. Unfortunately, there is a lack of financial instruments to hedge against this...

Many college and university 403(b) plans restrict investment choices to the funds offered by TIAA-CREF, the current manager of over half of all 403(b) contributions. In the face of 2006 Internal Revenue Code changes some sponsors are dropping alternatives to TIAA-CREF. Using historical data, we...

We examine the risk characteristics and capital adequacy of hedge funds through the Value-at-Risk approach. Using extensive data on nearly fifteen hundred hedge funds, we find that only 3.7% live and 10.9% dead funds are under-capitalized as of March 2003. Moreover, the under-capitalized funds...

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) are pools of assets owned and managed directly or indirectly by governments to achieve national objectives. These funds have raised concerns about: (i) financial stability, (ii) corporate governance and (iii) political interference and protectionism. At the same...

There is an extensive literature documenting a mutual fund performance deficit, whereby a large number of mutual funds underperform the market index. One possible cause is conflicts of interest between mutual funds and investors. I explore the consequences of a new regulation prohibiting funds...

It has been the author's privilege in recent years to personally visit with a number of nationally recognized retirement industry gurus. Generally speaking, these discussions have tended to identify two obstacles as blocking the implementation of any corporate strategy designed to retire workers...

Hedge funds just celebrated their first anniversary in Spain but their origins date back to the midtwentieth century. Since then, this industry has grown continuously worldwide from a few funds in a few famous managers' hands to thousands of them operating in a heterogeneous universe of...

Many countries around the world are partly prefunding their otherwise pay-as-you-go (PAYG) financed social security systems by establishing or further developing existing public pension reserve funds (PPRFs). Most OECD countries have put in place internal and external governance mechanisms and...

Private equity funds and hedge funds are both alternative asset classes that are continuously growing in importance. Although they have different focuses, they share some characteristics. First of all, both have or allegedly have a significant impact on the economy as well as the financial...