This chapter provides a perspective on the rapidly developing literature on investment performance evaluation. I use the stochastic discount factor approach to present and critique current performance measurement techniques in a unified setting. I offer a number of suggestions to improve...

We use a Markov chain model to evaluate pure persistence in hedge fund returns. We study two forms of pure persistence: absolute persistence and persistence with respect to the high water mark, accounting for the size of drawdowns. We find that hedge funds in general exhibit persistence in...

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...

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...

In the paper a multivariate unobserved components model for returns and net inflows into hedge funds is employed to assess whether the flows of funds into the industry are dynamically related to returns. The econometric model is used to estimate expected flows and expected returns as unobserved...

Recent studies have documented that institutional investors trade contrary to the predictions of the book-to market anomaly. We examine whether a prominent sub-group of institutional investors, namely hedge funds, differ from other institutions in terms of their trading behavior with respect to...

For 5,500 North American hedge funds following 11 different strategies, we analyse the stand-alone performance of these strategies using a stochastic discount factor approach. Employing the same data, we then consider the diversification benefits of each hedge fund strategy when combined with a...

We develop a new factor selection methodology of spanning the space of hedge fund risk factors with all available exchange traded funds (ETFs). We demonstrate the efficacy of the methodology with out-of-sample hedge fund return replication, and find that the replication accuracy increases with...

We survey articles covering how hedge funds returns are explained, using linear and non-linear multifactor models that examine hedge funds as option portfolios or indices. We provide an integrated view of the implicit factor and the statistical factor models that are largely able to explain...