What is the relative importance of asset allocation policy versus active portfolio management in explaining variability in performance? Considerable confusion surrounds both time-series and cross-sectional regressions and the importance of asset allocation. Cross-sectional regressions naturally...

What is the relative importance of asset allocation policy versus active portfolio management in explaining variability in performance? Considerable confusion surrounds both time-series and cross-sectional regressions and the importance of asset allocation. Cross-sectional regressions naturally...

Despite the retrenchment of the hedge fund industry in 2008, hedge fund assets under management are currently over one and a half trillion dollars. We analyze the potential biases in reported hedge fund returns, in particular survivor-ship bias and back fill bias. We then decompose the returns...

The authors decomposed their estimated pre-fee 1995–2009 hedge fund return of 11.13 percent into fees (3.43 percent), an alpha (3.00 percent), and a beta (4.70 percent). The year-by-year results show that alphas were positive during every year of the past decade, even during the recent...