Institutional investors have increased their allocation to private assets to capture a potential return premium over public assets and diversification benefits. However, an allocation to private assets, which typically are less liquid than public assets, raises questions: “How does an...

This paper proposes a quantitative theory of the interaction between private and public debt in an open economy. Excessive private debt increases the frequency of financial crises. During such crises the government provides fiscal bailouts financed with risky public debt. This response may cause...

This paper argues that excessive international private debt increases the frequency and severity of sovereign debt crises. I develop a quantitative theory of private and public debt that allows me to measure the level of private overborrowing and its effect on the interest rate spread paid on...

This study analyzes the responses to a representative survey of wealth advisors on private wealth management practices, and compares the advisors' views to academic research in household finance. This study demonstrates that many wealth managers do not apply novel insights proposed by financial...

In 1997, France Telecom, the state-owned French telephone company, went through a partial privatization. We adapt a standard neoclassical model to predict how employees might respond to the firm's offer to sell them various classes of shares. Using a database that tracks over 200,000 eligible...

The growth of the hedge fund industry and the proliferation of retail alternative funds in combination with the fundamental reshaping of the regulatory landscape for the hedge fund industry suggest that mutual funds are becoming more like hedge funds as a matter of investment strategy while...

We analyze the monitoring efforts of a large active asset manager that involve high-level private meetings with portfolio firms that are unobservable to outsiders. Our analysis reveals the inner workings of the asset management organization based on detailed records of contacts with executives...

The chapter explores the potential profitability of a momentum strategy for a private investor. Such a strategy is based on price continuation and requires buying stocks that have performed well in the past while short selling underperforming stocks. In order to replicate a trading strategy...

There are many methods for conducting performance attribution with portfolios containing only liquid assets. Efforts to conduct similar types of attribution analyses for portfolios of private equity funds (and other illiquid investments) have been thwarted by a lack of periodic asset return data...