This paper explores the feasibility of a government-sponsored insurance company, patterned after the government-sponsored mortgage agencies, that would be authorized to sell government-insured wage-indexed retirement annuities. This enterprise would assume the current obligations and cash flows...

In this paper we simulate the performance of real estate portfolios using cash flows from commercial properties over the period 1977 Q4 through 2004 Q2. Our methodology differs from analyses that rely upon historical time-weighted rates of return on property. We relax implicit rebalancing and...

We examine the performance of the off-shore hedge fund industry over the period 1989-1995 using a database that includes both defunct and currently operating funds. The industry is characterized by high attrition rates of funds, low covariance with the U.S. stock market, evidence consistent with...

In this paper we address the factors influencing the institutional decision to allocate resources to real estate. We survey a sample of major institutional investors via a web questionnaire. They were willing to answer questions about their target real estate allocation, their plans to increase...

We summarize some of our own past findings and place them in the context of the historical development of the idea of the equity risk premium and its empirical measurement by financial economists. In particular, we focus on how the theory of compensation for investment risk developed in the 20th...

Funds of funds are an increasingly popular avenue for hedge fund investment. Despite the increasing interest in hedge funds as an alternative asset class, the high degree of fund specific risk and the lack of transparency may give fiduciaries pause. In addition, many of the most attractive hedge...

This paper examines governance explanations for the discount of

Incentive or performance fees for money managers are frequently accompanied by high-water mark provisions which condition the payment of the performance fee upon exceeding the maximum achieved share value. In this paper, we show that hedge fund performance fees are valuable to money managers,...

This paper analyzes the implications of cross-sectional hetero- skedasticity in repeat sales regression (RSR). RSR estimators are essentially geometric averages of individual asset returns because of the logarithmic transformation of price relatives. We show that the cross sectional variance of...

Short-selling differs significantly around the world, and practice depends not only on regulatory structure but upon costs and tax considerations. Our survey of world markets suggests that, while as much as 93 percent of the world's equity market by capitalization is shortable, there are...