Diversification is often spoken of as the only free lunch in investing, yet we show that it is not free and is properly considered only in light of its costs. More-exotic asset classes typically come with a higher price tag. We show that fees on diversifying asset classes are high relative to...

Millions of defined benefit pensioners must select a pension insurance method. We present a framework for making this decision within the context of US military veterans' Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP). Federal government subsidies generate a positive expected net payout for SBP. While insurance...

Despite ever more sophisticated risk management and measurement, investment professionals have generally overlooked a simple but powerful metric of relative risk and portfolio diversification -- the normal return gap. We develop a generalized specification of the expected difference in returns...

Health care costs represent a large and growing component of business and consumer expenditures in the US. Medical inflation represents these costs, and it differs from aggregate inflation and other market factors with respect to its rate of growth, statistical properties and the extent to which...