We offer a factor model for classifying socially responsible mutual funds and measuring their performance. Our factor model consists of six factors, the four widely used factors of market, small-large (SMB), value-growth (HML), and momentum, and two social responsibility factors, reflecting the...

This paper examines U.S. REIT leverage decisions and their effects on risk and return. We document that REITs are highly levered relative to industrial and high debt capacity firms, with an average market leverage of 46 percent over our 1990-2012 sample period. Using dynamic partial adjustment...

Two recent augmentations of standard factor models in the literature enable investors to compute benchmark-adjusted alphas (Angelidis et al., 2013) and peer-group adjusted alphas (Hunter et al., 2015). We show that by and large the funds placed in the top performance quartile using either one of...

We exploit detailed transaction and position data for a sample of long-short equity hedge funds to study the trading activity of fundamental investors. We find that hedge funds exhibit skill in opening positions, but that they close their positions too early, thereby forgoing about a third of...

Consistent with recent findings that investors perceive performance by price changes, cross-sectional return extrapolation comes entirely from capital gains. Stocks that do not pay dividends (capital-gain stocks) experience robust return extrapolation, while dividend-paying stocks do not. Using...

Utilizing new SEC data enabling us to compute performance of mutual funds' derivative positions, we study how funds use derivatives and how derivatives contribute to performance. Despite small portfolio weights, derivatives significantly impact funds' leverage and contribute largely to returns...

This paper analyses the performance of maturity transformation strategies during a period of high and low interest rates. Based on German government bond yields from September 1972 to May 2019,we construct a rolling window of bond ladders where long-term assets are financed by short-term...

Forming top quintile portfolios on the Sharpe ratio, the alpha, the information ratio, the excess manipulation proof performance measure EMPPM and the doubt ratio; we find that these portfolios persistently outperform similarly constructed mediocre third quintile portfolios throughout the twelve...

We present a comprehensive analysis of the performance and flows of U.S. actively-managed equity mutual funds during the COVID-19 crisis of 2020. We find that most active funds underperform passive benchmarks during the crisis, contradicting a popular hypothesis. Funds with high sustainability...

This paper examines the effect of regulatory constraints on fund performance and risk by comparing conventional and UCITS hedge funds. Using a matching estimator approach, we estimate the indirect cost of UCITS regulation to be between 1.06% and 4.05% per annum in terms of risk-adjusted returns....