We propose a new method to capture changes in hedge funds' exposures to risk factors, exploiting information from relatively high frequency conditioning variables. Using a consolidated database of nearly 15,000 individual hedge funds between 1994 and 2009, we find substantial evidence that hedge...

Samuelson (1967) argues that as a general matter it is easy to show that investors should be maximally diversified. For this reason many institutions are attracted to diversified portfolios of hedge funds, referred to as Funds of Hedge Funds (FOFs). In this paper we examine a new database that...

We address the attractiveness of 66 countries around the world for institutional real estate investments by constructing a composite index. For the index composition, we refer to the results of prior research on the parameters determining real estate investment activity on an aggregated country...

In this paper we explore how small countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan, can offer their aging populations the means to protect their retirement income against inflation without the governments directly issuing inflation-protected bonds. While inflation swaps are a well-known means...

Faced with historically low interest rates, investors are looking further into illiquid assets such as infrastructure in search of alternative sources of income, better diversification and a long-term investment perspective. This paper analyzes the key performance and risk characteristics of the...

This paper investigates the sensitivity of the demand for safe government debt to currency unhedged and hedged excess returns in a sample of US mutual funds. We find evidence of active rebalancing towards government bonds that offer relatively higher returns on an unhedged basis, in particular...

The existing weight of evidence suggests that financial structure (the classification of a financial system as bank-based versus market-based) is irrelevant for economic growth. This contradicts the common belief that the institutional structure of a financial system matters. We re-examine this...

This paper investigates to what extent low-income developing countries (LIDCs) characterized as frontier markets (FMs) have begun to be subject to capital flows dynamics typically associated with emerging markets (EMs). Using a sample of developing countries covering the period 2000-14, we show...

This paper attempts to borrow the tradition of estimating policy reaction functions in monetary policy literature and apply it to capital controls policy literature. Using a novel weekly dataset on capital controls policy actions in 21 emerging economies over the period 1 January 2001 to 31...

This paper provides compelling evidence that equity market liberalization, the most efficient way to smooth financial market frictions such as credit constraints, can alleviate persistent cross-dynastic income inequality through increasing the accumulation of human capital. We examine the impact...