The benchmarks of a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) should take into account the economic and political context behind the creation of the SWF and the role the SWF plays as one part of a government's overall policy. The first benchmark of legitimacy ensures that the capital of the SWF is not...

We investigate the leverage of hedge funds using both time-series and cross-sectional analysis. Hedge fund leverage is counter-cyclical to the leverage of listed financial intermediaries and decreases prior to the start of the financial crisis in mid-2007. Hedge fund leverage is lowest in early...

Build America Bonds (BABs) are a new form of municipal financing introduced in 2009. Investors in BAB municipal bonds receive interest payments that are taxable, but issuers receive a subsidy from the U.S. Treasury. The BAB program has succeeded in lowering the cost of funding for state and...

In a no-arbitrage framework, any variable that affects the pricing of the domestic yield curve has the potential to predict foreign exchange risk premiums. The most widely used interest rate predictor is the difference in short rates across countries, known as carry, but the short rate is only...

We decompose the term structure of expected equity returns into (1) the real short rate, (2) a premium for holding real long-term bonds, or the real duration premium, the excess returns of nominal long-term bonds over real bonds which reflects (3) expected inflation and (4) inflation risk, and...

We decompose the term structure of expected equity returns into (1) the real short rate, (2) a premium for holding real long-term bonds, or the real duration premium, the excess returns of nominal long-term bonds over real bonds which reflects (3) expected inflation and (4) inflation risk, and...

Hedge funds often impose lockups and notice periods to limit the ability of investors to withdraw capital. We model the investor's decision to withdraw capital as a real option and treat lockups and notice periods as exercise restrictions. Our methodology incorporates time-varying probabilities...

The ability of hedge fund investors to exit a fund by exchanging ownership for cash at the prevailing NAV is often blocked by lockups and notice periods. We model the exit decision as a real option and incorporate lockups and notice periods as exercise restrictions. We compute the cost of these...

Option volatilities have significant predictive power for the cross section of stock returns and vice versa. Stocks with large increases in call implied volatilities tend to rise over the following month whereas increases in put implied volatilities forecast future decreases in next-month stock...

Long‐horizon investors have an edge. They can ride out short‐term fluctuations in risk premiums, profit from periods of elevated risk aversions and short‐term mispricing, and they can pursue illiquid investment opportunities. The turmoil we have seen in the capital markets over the last...