Sénéchal proposes a new analytical framework—the empirical law of active management—to assess the breadth, or diversification, and the skill of a portfolio manager. The framework requires no assumptions regarding a manager’s asset return expectations or investment process. The framework...

This paper uses stochastic dominance techniques to examine whether managerial skills vary across fund managers in European equity funds. The use of these techniques allows us to compare different investment alternatives in an uncertain setting under very simple assumptions regarding investor...

Fund managers can only exhibit selectivity through purchasing (selling) stocks that appreciate (depreciate) more frequently than expected from random occurrence, if stocks are incorrectly priced. We develop a method that can statistically identify fund managers that exhibit net, buy, and sell...

Good market timing skills can be an important factor contributing to hedge funds' out-performance. In this paper we use a unique semi-parametric panel data model capable of providing consistent short period estimates of the return correlations with three market factors for a sample of Long/Short...

We develop a directional trading model and a crisis management model to measure fund manager skills more adequately. We test the robustness of both traditional market timing models and new management skill models to changes in their underlying investor utility function and excess return...

We study how mutual fund managers gain an edge in selecting stocks in an era of globalization. We use textual analysis to construct a new measure that captures a mutual fund's offshore exposure concentration through holding U.S. multinational firms. The proposed offshore concentration index...

We measure the ability of professional investment managers in timing cashflow vs. discount-rate news, the two components of market returns. We find that the average U.S. equity mutual fund exhibits cashflow-timing skills of 2.12/year, but discount-rate timing of -0.84/year; further,...