We examine the relative weights hedge fund investors attach to past information in the fund selection process. The weighting scheme appears inconsistent with the one of econometric forecast models that predict fund returns, alphas or Sharpe ratios. In particular, investor flows are highly...

We analyse the evolution of the hedge fund industry and try to assess whether this alternative investment class makes sense over the traditional one. We are concerned with the impact of the crisis. Common sense tells us that that during phases of market euphoria, possibly due to over-optimism,...

In the presence of rising concern about climate change that potentially affects risk and return of investors’ portfolio companies, active investors might have dispersed climate risk exposures. We compute mutual fund covariance with market-wide climate change news index and find that high...

We examine the performance of passively managed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that provide exposure to global emerging markets equities. We find that the tracking errors of these funds are substantially higher than previously reported levels for developed markets ETFs. ETFs that use statistical...

The paper revisits the issue of robustness of fund performance by evaluating European large-cap equity funds. For this fund category traditional market risk factor adjusted performance measures are expected to be fairly robust. However, for the sample of 65 European large-cap mutual equity...

This paper examines the performance and persistence in performance of style-consistent European equity mutual funds between 1988 and 2010. Using a large survivorship bias-free sample for six European countries, we document strong evidence of persistence in benchmark-adjusted returns over 1-year...

Short selling exchange-traded funds (ETFs) has become a common means of speculating or hedging in response to pessimistic expectations about a specific market or sector, as the short interest of ETFs is more than 10 times that of individual stocks, on average. We determine that sector-based ETFs...

This paper examines the influence of fund flow on fund performance in US domestic equity funds from 1993 to 2008. We find that fund flow has an asymmetric influence on fund performance. Inflow will significantly push up simultaneous fund performance, whereas outflow does not significantly result...

European index funds and exchange-traded funds underperform their benchmarks by 50 to 150 basis points per annum. The explanatory power of dividend withholding taxes as a determinant of this underperformance is at least at par with fund expenses. Dividend taxes also explain performance...

Extant research has focused on mutual fund managers' ability to time market returns or volatility. In this paper, we offer a new perspective on the traditional timing issue by examining fund managers' ability to time market wide liquidity. Using the CRSP mutual fund database, we find strong...