We show how to use panel data on household consumption to directly estimate households’ risk preferences. Specifically, we measure heterogeneity in risk aversion among households in Thai villages using a full risk-sharing model, which we then test allowing for this heterogeneity. There is...

The paper examines the performance of US no-load equity mutual funds. Fund performance is derived using stochastic frontier analysis for a flexible functional form. This analysis allows us to derive parametric estimates of efficiency scores for each fund in our sample for the first time in the...

A discontinuity, or kink, at zero in the hedge fund net return distribution has been interpreted as evidence of managers manipulating returns to avoid showing small losses. Instead, we propose alternative explanations for this phenomenon. In particular, we show that incentive fees can...

An empirical issue is whether a mutual fund’s change in intertemporal risk is intentional or arises from risk mean reversion. Our methodology uses actual fund trades to identify funds that actively change risk. Funds that are statistically identified as trading to change return variance or...

The condition of Risk Aversion implies that the Utility Function must be concave. Taking into account the dependence of the Utility Function on the wealth that in turn depends on the return, we consider a return with any type of two-parameter distribution. It is possible to define Risk and...

Longevity risk is the risk that the promised recipient of lifetime cashflows ends up living much longer than originally anticipated, thus causing a shortfall in funding. A related risk, reimbursement risk is the risk that providers of health insurance face when new and expensive drugs are...

This paper solves the dynamic investment problem of a risk averse agent compensated with a performance related bonus plus a salary guaranteed up to a certain level of underperformance. The main contribution is to explicitly take into account the financial fragility of the principal [employer],...

Using hedge fund returns and county-level religiosity data during 1996-2013, we examine the effects of local religious beliefs on hedge fund risk-taking behaviors. We find that local religiosity is significantly negatively related to both total and idiosyncratic volatilities of hedge funds, even...

Historical VaR, CVaR and ES (Expected Shortfall) to LIQUIDATION Software is a model characterized by its straightforwardness, allowing regulators measure risk using a standard database of primitive factors and portfolio positions only, leaving little error margin in comparing market risk for...

This empirical study investigates the ability of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to replicate the risk-return characteristics of their respective benchmarks accurately. By decomposing ex-post tracking performance, this study finds that the commonly used measure, tracking error, rarely sufficiently...