Hedge fund managers are subject to several non-linear incentives: (a) performance fee options (call); (b) equity investor's redemption options (put); (c) prime broker contracts allowing for forced deleverage (put). The interaction of these option-like incentives affects optimal leverage ex-ante,...

Credit risk has recently been identified as a cause of declining international diversification capacity; in this paper we offer an alternative methodology to create an equity portfolio with exposure to global credit risk and controlled market risk. Following the factor decomposition methodology,...

We examine how global institutional funds respond to news-based economic policy uncertainty (EPU) in the investment destination and home country. We document a number of novel findings. First, on an average there exists a negative flow-EPU relationship for global funds. Second, we document a...

The aim of the paper is to develop a technique for rebalancing pension fund portfolios in function of their point wise level of risk. The performance of pension funds is often measured by their global asset returns because of the latter's influence on periodic contributions and/or future...

The exceptional rise in government deficits following the subprime crisis, the recent commodity price spikes and the increase in inflation volatility have revived the debate on medium to long-term resurgence of inflation. Using a vector-autoregressive model, this paper investigates the...

We study the role of bilateral political relations in explaining variations in the equity portfolio allocation of foreign institutional investors. Using a large micro sample at the fund-firm-year level, we find that when the relations between two countries become more distant, institutional...

This paper studies the level, determinants, and implications of the factor timing ability of hedge fund managers. We find that approximately 30% of hedge funds display factor timing ability on at least one factor, concentrated especially at the market, size, and bond factors. Better factor...

In an economy with a sovereign wealth fund (SWF), the government may draw on the fund to supplement other government revenues. If the fund is invested in risky assets, this introduces a new stochastic element into the government’s budget. We analyze the interaction between the draw from and...

Hedge fund managers are subject to several non-linear incentives: (a) performance fee options (call); (b) equity investor's redemption options (put); (c) prime broker contracts allowing for forced deleverage (put). The interaction of these option-like incentives affects optimal leverage ex-ante,...

We propose that institutional investors’ portfolio rebalancing across asset classes contributes to the stock market’s puzzlingly large response to monetary shocks. We identify this channel through a cross-sectional approach and find that, ceteris paribus, a stock with 10% higher ownership...