In recent years, the deferred annuity has aroused intensive discussion as a retirement solution product. In the course of understanding reasons behind the low demand of immediate annuities, two behavioural models, cumulative prospect theory and the hyperbolic discount model, have suggested that...

The financial crisis and the rescue measures taken by governments and central banks increased investors' interest in liquidity and in real assets supposed to offer a hedge against inflation. Against this background, we investigate empirically four real assets (real estate, commodities,...

Recently, there has been explosive growth in two products from the hedge fund industry - multi-strategy (MS) funds and funds of hedge funds (FOFs), both of which offer diversification across different hedge fund strategies. In well-functioning markets, both investment vehicles should offer...

In this paper, we investigate the performance persistence of hedge funds over time horizons between 6 and 36 months based on a merged sample from the Lipper/TASS and CISDM databases for the time period from 1994 to 2008. Unlike previous literature, we use a panel probit regression approach to...

In this paper, we examine the ability of hedge funds and funds of hedge funds to generate absolute returns using fund level data. Based on the comparison of the empirical distributions of the holding period returns of hedge funds, a U.S. stock index and a U.S. bond index, we classify hedge funds...

This paper challenges existing studies of mutual fund market timing that find little evidence of timing ability. Using a sample of daily returns for 35 countries, we find that more than a third of mutual funds show significantly positive market timing ability across all countries. We show that...

This paper proposes a novel database merging approach and re-examines the fundamental questions regarding hedge fund performance. Before drawing conclusions about fund performance, we form an aggregate database by exploiting all available information across and within seven commercial databases...

Funds of hedge funds are diversified investment vehicles that provide investors with diversification either across managers within a specific hedge fund strategy or across a wide range of hedge fund strategies. In this paper, we contrast the performance of funds of hedge funds that diversify...

This paper proposes a novel database merging approach and re-examines the fundamental questions regarding hedge fund performance. Before drawing conclusions about fund performance, we form an aggregate database by exploiting all available information across and within seven commercial databases...

The paper concentrates on value and size effects in country portfolios. It contributes to academic literature threefold. First, I provide fresh evidence that the value and size effects may be useful in explaining the cross-sectional variation in country returns. The computations are based on a...