Using a unique dataset of private equity funds over the last two decades, this paper analyzes the cash flow, return, and risk characteristics of private equity. We document the draw down and capital return schedules for the typical private equity fund, and show that it takes several years for capital to be invested, and over ten years for capital to be returned to generate excess returns. We pr...

This paper provides a global perspective on equity home bias using MSCI country and world index (returns) data for 39 countries for the period 2000 – 2009. Two measures of home bias, namely, diffuse priors based I-CAPM measure, and, BayesStein shrinkage based mean-variance measure are used. The I-CAPM is tested and holds for the country sample. The estimated optimal equity investment weights ar...

This paper investigates individual fund returns in the private equity industry using a unique data set collected by Venture Economics. We find a large degree of heterogeneity among fund returns. Those returns persist strongly across funds by private equity firms. The returns also improve with firm experience. Better performing funds are more likely to raise follow-on funds and raise larger fund...

Currency carry trades exploiting violations of uncovered interest rate parity in G10 currencies deliver significant excess returns with annualized Sharpe equal to or greater than those of equity market factors (19902012). Using data on out-of-the-money foreign exchange options, I compute returns to crash-hedged portfolios and demonstrate that the high returns to carry trades are not due to peso...

This paper investigates the relation between mutual fund flows and the real economy. The findings of this paper support the theory that the positive co-movement of flows into equity funds and stock market returns is explained by a common response to macroeconomic news. Variables that predict the real economy as well as the equity premium – in particular dividend-price ratio, default spread, rel...

We analyze the cross-sectional differences in the tail risk of equity returns and identify the drivers of tail risk. We provide two statistical procedures to test the hypothesis of cross-sectional downside tail shape homogeneity. An empirical study of 230 US non-financial firms shows that between 2008 and 2011 the cross-sectional tail shape is homogeneous across equity returns. The heterogeneit...