Motivated by the success of internal habit formation preferences in explaining asset pricing puzzles, we introduce these preferences in a life-cycle model of consumption and portfolio choice with liquidity constraints, undiversifiable labor income risk and stock-market participation costs. In...

We study the infinite horizon model of household portfolio choice under liquidity constraints and revisit the portfolio specialization puzzle for impatient consumers with access to riskless and risky assets. We consider a labour income process that allows us to decompose the consumption and...

We uncover a new channel through which shocks are transmitted across international markets. Investor flows to funds domiciled in developed markets force significant changes in their portfolio allocations to emerging markets. These forced trades affect equity prices, correlations between emerging...

To identify capacity constraints in hedge funds and simultaneously gauge how well-informed hedge fund investors are, we need measures of investor demand that do not affect deployed hedge fund assets. Using new data on investor interest from a secondary market for hedge funds, this paper verifies...

Rational theories of the closed-end fund premium puzzle highlight fund share and asset illiquidity, managerial ability, and fees as important determinants of the premium. Several of these attributes are difficult to measure for mutual funds, and easier to measure for hedge funds. This paper...

Many questions about institutional trading can only be answered if one tracks high-frequency changes in institutional ownership. In the United States, however, institutions are only required to report their ownership quarterly in 13-F filings. We infer daily institutional trading behavior from...

We use a comprehensive data set of funds-of-funds to investigate performance, risk, and capital formation in the hedge fund industry from 1995 to 2004. While the average fund-of-funds delivers alpha only in the period between October 1998 and March 2000, a subset of funds-of-funds consistently...

Using a new technique, and weekly data for 25 countries from 1994 to 1998, we analyze the relationship between institutional cross-border portfolio flows, and domestic and foreign equity returns. In emerging markets, institutional flows forecast statistically indistinguishable movements in...

Using detailed data on the currency transactions of institutional fund managers, this paper shows that funds that experience high returns on their currency holdings also incur lower transaction costs on their currency trades. This finding holds both in the cross section, i.e. funds that perform...

Hedge funds have generated significant absolute returns (alpha) in the decade between 1995 and 2004. However, the level of alpha has declined substantially over this period. We investigate whether capacity constraints at the level of hedge fund strategies have been responsible for this decline....