We examine the performance life cycle of hedge funds. Performance declines with age are pervasive, not just for the average fund, but also for past winners and for funds with characteristics that predict cross-sectional returns. Fund growth and decreasing performance incentives appear to...

The insurance industry could potentially play a greater constructive role in mitigating climate risk by aligning with entities that scrupulously incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) aspects in their business philosophy

Climate risk impacts the insurance industry on both sides of the balance sheets. On the one hand, rising weather-related claims are affecting the liability side. At the same time, there is an increasing expectation from investors, shareholders, customers and other stakeholders for insurers to...

In contrast to the perception of a common 2/20 fee structure, we find considerable cross-sectional and time series variations in hedge fund fees using a large panel data set. Fund family characteristics and prior performance play an important role in fee determination. New fund families are...

Cryptocurrencies have grown exponentially and gained increasing attention in recent years, and while it's true that it's secure by design, “Security” remains the cornerstone of any and all cryptoassets.To benchmark the global cryptocurrencies market from a security perspective, track current...

The hedge funds industry has evolved tremendously in recent years. According to the CASAM CISDM Industry Report, assets under management in hedge funds had grown from less than USD 50 billion at the end of 1990 to over USD 2.1 trillion at the end of 2007. However, assets managed by hedge funds...

This paper examines investment patterns of 50 sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) in nations around the world. We study investment by SWFs in 903 public and private firms over the period 1984-2009. As expected, we observe SWFs investments are more often in private firms when the market returns of...

On 11 March 2015, SUERF jointly organised a conference with the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and the Austrian Society for Bank Research (Bankwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft - BWG). The present SUERF Study 2015/2 includes a selection of papers based on the authors' contributions to the Vienna...

How does sovereign risk affect investors' behavior? We answer this question using a novel database that combines sovereign default probabilities for 27 developed and emerging markets with monthly data on the portfolios of individual bond mutual funds. We first show that changes in yields do not...

The article presents the main features of one category of innovative financial products – exchange traded commodities (ETCs) and results of the analysis of the European market for ETCs. ETCs are products listed and traded on the stock exchanges and they offer investors returns based on various...