We provide the first quantitative survey of the empirical literature on hedge fund performance. We examine the impact of potential biases on the reported results. Empirical analysis in prior studies has been plagued by fragmentation of underlying data and by limited consensus on how hedge fund...

Standard economics models require that financial incentives improve performance, while leading theories in psychology allow for the opposite. Experimental results are mixed, and so far have not been corrected for publication bias and model uncertainty. We collect 1,568 economics estimates...

We conduct a meta-analysis of 1,973 estimates of stock price responses to shareholder activism reported in 67 primary studies. We document publication bias in the literature. Corrected activism effects range from 0% to 1.5%. Effects are stronger when shareholder rights are better protected and...

We examine the factors influencing published estimates of hedge fund performance. Using a sample of 1,019 intercept terms from regressions of hedge fund returns on risk factors (the alphas) collected from 74 studies, we document a strong downward trend in the reported alphas. The trend persists...

A prominent factor used in most models predicting stock returns is firm size. Yet no consensus has emerged on the magnitude and stability of the size premium, with some researchers even questioning the usefulness of the factor. To take stock of the voluminous academic literature on the size...

A key theoretical prediction in financial economics is that under risk neutrality and rational expectations a currency's forward rates should form unbiased predictors of future spot rates. Yet scores of empirical studies report negative slope coefficients from regressions of spot rates on...