This paper compares the out-of-sample performance of no-load and load mutual funds. Unlike the pervious literature, this paper provides a more comprehensive analysis as it uses methodologies to incorporate loads directly into the returns, utilizes a large sample of funds free of survivorship...

State lottery prizes are currently independent of all financial markets. If States made these prizes positively correlated with the stock market, financial risk would be transferred to lottery ticket holders. This would allow States to risklessly increase their lottery profits

Sharpe's (1966) portfolio performance ratio, the ratio of the portfolio?s expected return to its standard deviation, is a very well known tool for comparing portfolios. However, due to the presence of random denominators in the definition of the ratio, the sampling distribution of the Sharpe...

This study examines the degree to which the well-known Morningstar rating system is a predictor of out-of-sample mutual fund performance, an important issue given that high-rated funds receive the lion's share of investor cash inflow. We use a data set based on growth mutual funds that is free...

This paper utilizes a new data set from AllianceBernstein that, unlike other corporate governance data, has monthly-updated firm-level governance ratings for 21 emerging markets countries for almost a five year period. With these unique data, we examine how changes in corporate governance...

With recent trends toward globalization and capital market integration, emerging markets have increasingly become the target of many investors in search for higher returns. Before placing their money abroad, however, investors need to bear considerable challenges in mind. While investments in...

In this paper, we analyze the determinants and effects of credit default swap (CDS) trading initiation in the sovereign bond market. CDS trading initiation is associated with a 30–150 basis point reduction in sovereign bond yields, with greater yield reductions accruing to higher default risk...

Extreme events affect both the real economy and financial markets, and it is valuable to understand their interrelationship. We analyze the likelihood of crises in the macroeconomy and in financial markets. We compare rare disaster data from Barro and Jin (2011), crisis data from Reinhart and...

This paper examines the effect of sovereign credit rating change announcements on the CDS spreads of the event countries, and their spillover effects on other emerging economies' CDS premiums. We find that positive events have a greater impact on CDS markets in the two-day period surrounding the...