Recent research reveals that hedge fund returns exhibit a range of different,possibly non-linear pay-off patterns. It is difficult to qualify all these patternssimultaneously as being rational in a traditional framework for optimal financial decisionmaking. In this paper we present a simple...

We examine the relative weights hedge fund investors attach to past information in the fund selection process. The weighting scheme appears inconsistent with econometric forecasting models that predict fund returns, alphas or Sharpe ratios. In particular, investor flows are highly sensitive to...

We estimate an investors' demand model for hedge funds to analyze the potential impact of leverage limits in the industry. Our estimation results highlight the importance of heterogeneous investor preference for the use of leverage, i.e., 20% of investors prefer leverage usage while others do...