We examine (i) whether the business practices of Berkshire Hathaway investees are consistent with Warren Buffett's public statements on what constitutes good accounting, governance and investing practices and (ii) whether these practices are associated with Berkshire's initial “selection” or...

Over the years, Institute research has shown active managers, even the best-performing ones, suffered periods of weak returns relative to benchmarks and their peers. But underperformance, up to three years, had relatively little impact on the best-performing funds' ability to deliver success...

Using a news-based index of geopolitical risk (GPR), we document a strong negative relationship between firm-level corporate investment and GPR. When the GPR index doubles, investment rate in the next quarter declines by 14% of its sample mean. The effect is more pronounced for firms with more...

Many institutional investors depend on the returns they generate to fund their operations and liabilities. How do these investors' financial conditions affect the management of their portfolios? We address this issue using the insurance industry because insurers are large investors for which...

Recent empirical evidence suggests that US industrial firms invest heavily in noncash, risky financial assets. Using hand-collected data on financial portfolios of German firms, we show that risky asset holdings are not an anomaly unique to the US. We find that industrial firms in Germany invest...

This paper studies the investment returns and asset allocation policies of college and university endowments who share annual performance and asset allocation data with the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) annual endowment study. In this paper, we review...

This paper considers the effect of corruption on the effciency of capital investment. Using firm-level level data from the World Bank enterprise surveys, covering 90 developing and transition economies, we consider whether the cost of informal bribe payments distorts the efficient allocation of...

The aim of this paper is to develop an alternative approach for assessing an insurer’s solvency as a proposal for a standard model for Solvency II. Instead ofderiving minimum capital requirements—as it is done in solvency regulation—our model provides company-specific minimum standards for...

This paper considers the effect of corruption on the effciency of capital investment. Using firm-level level data from the World Bank enterprise surveys, covering 90 developing and transition economies, we consider whether the cost of informal bribe payments distorts the efficient allocation of...

Economic life of achieving economic and financial effects of an investment opportunity presents the period in which selected investment option remains economically superior from the other alternative investment opportunity. Time period in which the investment project needs to prove its...