The validity of the price marks placed on bonds for valuation purposes is important for a diverse group of stakeholders, including investors, mutual fund managers, dealers, pricing services, and financial regulators. We analyze the dispersion of monthend price marks simultaneously placed on...

This study documents strong mean aversion in U.S. fixed income returns (but not stock returns) at 5-20 year horizons. These results are only slightly weaker for nominal returns than for real returns and prevail regardless of the period examined (1926-2011, 1951-2011, 1857-1925 or 1857-2011). I...

There is an annuity puzzle in that the actual allocation by individuals to annuities is low. Longevity bonds, to hedge overall economy-wide mortality risk, have been proposed, but these bonds have challenges and the proponents have not shown how governments are hedged. This paper recommends that...

The portfolio performance evaluation involves the determination of how a managed portfolio has performed relative to some comparison benchmark. Performance evaluation methods generally fall into two categories, namely conventional and risk-adjusted methods. The most widely used conventional...

To explore the rationality and competitiveness of the mutual fund industry, we analyze the alpha of active and index mutual funds from a global sample of more than 60,000 equity and fixed income funds and test the null hypothesis that alphas to investors are zero. We distinguish between...

We examine whether investor sentiment affects hedge fund companies' decision to start new funds. We find significantly more fund inceptions in hot markets than in cold markets. Moreover, funds opened in hot markets exhibit weaker subsequent performance, higher risk of fraud, and shorter...