Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent hedge funds are subject to irrationality in their investment decisions. The authors advance the hypothesis that irrational behavior affects hedge fund returns despite their sophistication and active management style....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how hedge fund database biases developed during the 2007‐2009 financial crisis. Design/methodology/approach – The sample consists of 8,935 hedge funds from the Lipper TASS Hedge Fund Database for the January 2002‐September 2010 time...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the possibility of creating hedge funds “clones” using liquid exchange traded instruments. Design/methodology/approach – Authors analyze the performance of fixed weight and extended Kalman filter generated clone portfolios (EKF) for 14...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose that simple measures of linear association are unable to capture accurately the dependence between the survival of hedge funds and funds of funds, respectively. The paper then aims to advocate the use of copulas to model the joint survival of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the return performance of different investment strategies in the hedge fund sector, with a particular emphasis on the recent US financial crisis of 2007‐2010. Additionally, the paper aims to investigate the comovement of hedge fund index...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the ability of hedge funds and funds of hedge funds to generate absolute returns using fund level data. Design/methodology/approach – The absolute return profiles are identified using properties of the empirical distributions of fund returns....

Purpose – This paper seeks to analyse Steel Partners' investments and activism targeting United Industrial, Ronson, and BKF Capital to provide context for the debate surrounding shareholder activism by hedge funds and how incumbent management should cope with it. Steel Partners is one of the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate short‐selling around private investment in public equity (PIPE) issuances, for evidence of manipulative short‐selling by hedge funds. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use the Regulation SHO short‐selling data in combination...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the benefits of using a more diverse derivative strategy of a fund in relation to their performance and risk characteristics. Design/methodology/approach – In this study, samples of 3,382 individual hedge funds and 761 funds of hedge...