This chapter provides a perspective on the rapidly developing literature on investment performance evaluation. I use the stochastic discount factor approach to present and critique current performance measurement techniques in a unified setting. I offer a number of suggestions to improve...

Using the herding measures of Lakonishok, Shleifer and Vishny (1992) (LSV) and Frey, Herbst and Walter (2007) (FHW), we assess herding by French equity mutual funds between 1999 and 2005. We show that LSV herding amounts to 6.5% while FHW herding is about 2.5 times stronger. We observe that...

We provide a first look at the performance of Chinese open-end mutual funds from 2001 to 2008 using data from a high quality mutual fund database provided by the GTA Information Technology Co., Ltd. From daily return data, we find that some Chinese open-end mutual funds can provide statistically...

This paper shows that the stylized fact of average mutual fund underperformance documented in the literature stems from expansion periods when funds have statistically significant negative risk-adjusted performance and not recession periods when risk-adjusted fund performance is positive. These...

We investigate whether positive or negative screening impacts the performance and risk of socially responsible mutual funds. We mimic the characteristics of mutual funds and bootstrap firm returns to form portfolios which reflect actual mutual fund holdings. We find positive screening results in...

Stocks with high sentiment betas are more sensitive to investor sentiment, with more subjective valuations. We contend that sentiment beta also captures the duration of mispricing. Accordingly, stocks with high (low) sentiment betas provide opportunities for momentum (contrarian) traders. We...

International mutual funds attract trillions of dollars and millions of domestic investors. Therefore, it's only natural that performance evaluation of this type mutual fund is becoming a common researched topic in finance. The purpose of this prospective working paper is to lay the ground for a...

We document persistence in the performance of emerging market equity funds and find several notable differences compared to US equity funds. First, the contribution of winner funds to the return spread between winner and losers is substantially larger for emerging market funds. Second, only a...

Although mutual fund performance has been dissected from almost every angle, very little attention has been paid to the connection between the actual active decisions made by management and the subsequent performance outcomes. In this paper we use information on institutional mutual funds to...

We find that aggregate net equity fund flows are strongly negatively correlated with changes in expected future stock market volatility as measured by the VIX. Implying that investor purchase decisions are primarily driven by returns and sale decisions by risk perceptions, we further find that...