We exploit variation in the ancestries of U.S. equity mutual fund managers to show that ancestry affects portfolio decisions. Controlling for fund firm location, we find that funds overweight stocks from their managers’ ancestral home countries in their non-U.S. portfolio by 132 bps or 20.34%...

We develop a new tail risk measure for hedge funds to examine the impact of tail risk on fund performance and to identify the sources of tail risk. We find that tail risk affects the cross-sectional variation in fund returns, and investments in both, tailsensitive stocks as well as options,...

We develop a new systematic tail risk measure for equity-oriented hedge funds to examine the impact of tail risk on fund performance and to identify the sources of tail risk. We find that tail risk affects the cross-sectional variation in fund returns, and investments in both, tail-sensitive...

Recent academic research predicts that (i) equity mutual funds have a systematically better performance during periods of economic downturn and (ii) investors are willing to pay high fees for funds that provide recession insurance. In this paper, we test these hypotheses using international fund...

While it is established that idiosyncratic volatility has a negative impact on the cross-section of future stock returns, the relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and future hedge fund returns is largely unexplored. We document that hedge funds with high idiosyncratic volatility...

We investigate the relationship between a mutual fund's variation in factor exposures and its future performance. Using a dynamic state space version of Carhart (1997)'s four factor model to capture factor variation, we find that funds with volatile factor exposures underperform funds with...

We investigate the relationship between a mutual fund’s variation in systematic risk factor exposures and its future performance. Using a dynamic state space version of Carhart (1997)’s four factor model to capture risk factor variation, we find that funds with volatile risk factor exposures...

This paper proposes a risk-based explanation of the momentum anomaly on equity markets. Regressing the momentum strategy return on the return of a self-financing portfolio going long (short) in stocks with high (low) crash sensitivity in the USA from 1963 to 2012 reduces the momentum effect from...

While it is established that idiosyncratic volatility has a negative impact on the cross-section of future stock returns, the relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and future hedge fund returns is largely unexplored. We document that hedge funds with high idiosyncratic volatility...