This dissertation contains two essays in empirical finance. The first essay studies the mutual fund industry, and the second essay looks into the stock market. Both studies provide insights in the underlying mechanism of some asset return patterns identified from the data currently available.The...

The top-order zonal polynomials Ck(A),and top-order invariant polynomials Ck1,...,kr(A1,...,Ar)in which each of the partitions of ki,i = 1,..., r,has only one part, occur frequently in multivariate distribution theory, and econometrics - see, for example Phillips (1980, 1984, 1985, 1986),...

Using generating functions, the top-order zonal polynomials that occur in much distribution theory under normality can be recursively related to other symmetric functions (power-sum and elementary symmetric functions, Ruben [19], Hillier, Kan, and Wang [9]). Typically, in a recursion of this...

Using generating functions, the top-order zonal polynomials that occur in much distribution theory under normality can be recursively related to other symmetric functions (power-sum and elementary symmetric functions, Ruben [19], Hillier, Kan, and Wang [9]). Typically, in a recursion of this...

For the popular mean-variance portfolio choice problem in the case without a risk-free asset, we develop a new portfolio strategy to mitigate estimation risk. We show that in both calibrations and real datasets, optimally combining the sample global minimum variance portfolio with a sample...