More and more investors apply socially responsible screens when building their stock portfolios. This raises the question whether these investors can increase their performance by incorporating such screens into their investment process. To answer this question we implement a simple trading...

In this paper, we investigate the performance persistence of hedge funds over time horizons between 6 and 36 months based on a merged sample from the Lipper/TASS and CISDM databases for the time period from 1994 to 2008. Unlike previous literature, we use a panel probit regression approach to...

We use a proprietary database of private equity returns to measure the excess return of private equity over public equity and to partition it into two components: an asset class alpha and compensation for illiquidity. Our evidence suggests that private equity managers, as a group, generate alpha...

Our study is the first to combine returns based and characteristics based style analysis into a single style analysis model. We use Best Fit Indices to establish the ‘investment domains' of our sample managers, along the lines of size and ‘style,' and then use our multidimensional...

The emergence of tactical allocation and factor timing strategies has prompted professionals to devise various means of measuring tactical and timing skills. This paper proposes a new measure, based on the new cash flows into and out of asset segments of the portfolio, which can easily be...

A number of techniques have been proposed to measure portfolio performance and to distinguish between performance due to forecasting security-specific returns and performance due to forecasting market-wide events. We show theoretically and empirically that it is possible to construct portfolios...

The aggregate portfolio of Chinese actively managed stock mutual funds exhibits a large and significantly positive alpha. Results from bootstrap simulations indicate that most Chinese active stock mutual fund managers have skill. A substantial amount of their outperformance can be attributed to...

In this study we evaluate the performance of actively managed equity mutual funds against a set of passively managed index funds. We find that the return spread between the best performing actively managed funds and a factor-mimicking portfolio of passive funds is positive and as large as 3 to 5...

This paper introduces new money-weighted metrics for investment performance analysis, based on arithmetic means of holding period rates weighted by the investment's market values. This approach generates rates of return which measure a fund's or portfolio's performance and a fund manager's...

Professional asset allocators frequently report positive alphas, and the generation of alpha is widely discussed in the context of asset allocation. This paper demonstrates that two-fund asset allocation strategies contain a positive-alpha bias and derives an expression for the alpha of an asset...