Hedge Fund returns are often highly serially correlated mainly due to illiquidity exposures given that investments in such securities tend to be inactively traded and associated market prices are not always readily available. Following that, observed returns of such alternative investments tend...

We introduce a conditional measure of skill, the correlation between a funds' residual trades, net of common trading motives, and future news about the stocks traded. Using this measure, we show that the average mutual fund manager in the cross-section has stock-picking skill. This result is...

The shadow wage is the social opportunity cost of labor. After reviewing earlier theoretical and empirical literature, we define four labor market conditions: fairly socially efficient (FSE), quasi-Keynesian unemployment (QKU), urban labor dualism (ULD) and rural labor dualism (RLD). We offer,...

Through this paper the author discusses the phenomenon of excessive Government borrowing and the factors that lead Governments to be so dependent on financial markets. It is argued that the combined effect of unregulated financial intermediaries, hedge funds and Credit Rating Agencies in...

When estimating future or pro forma financial statements and free cash flows we need to estimate future prices. In doing this we must estimate nominal increases in prices of many items, for instance selling prices, inputs prices (raw material, labor, overhead, etc.), cost of future debt, and...

Recent revelations on the use of fiduciary services by the wealthy and political leaders raise concerns regarding the use of such services for tax and creditor evasion. Yet given the secrecy shrouding much of the fiduciary industry, we do not know which fiduciary services are used for such...

This paper investigates the purchases and redemptions of a large cross-sectional sample of German equity funds. We find that investors punish bad performance by selling their shares, but also have a tendency to sell winners. Investors in large fund families show higher sales and redemption...

We present evidence of the impact of buy-side analysts on the behavior and performance of fund managers. Using data provided by a large global asset manager, we relate buy-side analysts' recommendations to fund transactions on a daily basis. Our results show that buy-side analysts have a...

We use a new data set to study the determinants of the performance of open-end actively managed equity mutual funds in 27 countries. We find that mutual funds underperform the market overall. The results show important differences in the determinants of fund performance in the U.S. and elsewhere...