This paper examines apparent misrepresentation among securitized non-agency loans using three indicators: unreported second liens, owner occupancy misreporting, and appraisal overstatements. We find that approximately 30% of loans exhibited some indication of potential misrepresentation. Misreporting is similar in both low and fulldocumentation loans and is associated with a 51% higher likeliho...

Eling and Schuhmacher (2007) compared the Sharpe ratio with other performance measures and found virtually identical rank ordering using hedge fund data. They conclude that the choice of performance measure has no critical influence on fund evaluation and that the Sharpe ratio is generally adequate for analyzing hedge funds. Nevertheless, their analysis does not include the class of tailor-made...

This paper derives optimal asset allocations (which assets to hold) and asset locations (in which accounts to hold them) for a risk-averse investor saving for retirement. The investor can hold taxable corporate bonds, tax-exempt municipal bonds, and stocks either in a tax-deferred or a conventional taxable savings account. Taxable bonds have a preferred location in the taxdeferred account and t...

Recent literature discusses the persistence of skewness and tail risk in hedge fund returns. The aim of this paper is to suggest an alternative skewness measure  which is derived as the normalized shape parameter from the skew-normal distribution. First, we illustrate that the skew-normal distribution is better able to catch the characteristics of hedge fund returns than the normal distributio...

The Wider Economic Impacts of High-Skilled Migrants: A Survey of the Literature In recent years, the economics of migration literature has shown a substantial growth in papers exploring host country impacts beyond the labour market. Specifically, researchers have begun to shift their attention from labour market and fiscal changes, towards exploring what we might call ‘the wider effects of migr...

This study assesses the relative performance of Greek equity funds employing a nonparametric method, specifically Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Using an original sample of cost and operational attributes we explore the effect of each variable on funds' operational efficiency for an oligopolistic and bank-dominated fund industry. Our results have significant implications for the investors' fu...

This study investigates whether institutional bond blockholders (i.e., bond funds that hold more than 5% of a firm’s outstanding bonds) impede firm innovative activities, and if they do, through which channels. We find that long-term bond blockholders do not discourage firms from conducting innovative activities. Short-term bond blockholders, however, significantly reduce both firm investments ...

In this paper, we provide additional empirical evidence on the impact of institutional investors on stock return dynamics. The Polish pension system reform in 1999 and the associated increase in institutional ownership due to the investment activities of pension funds are exploited as an unique institutional characteristic. Performing a variant of the event study methodology in an asymmetric GA...

This paper shows empirically that the positive association between mutual fund ownership and firm value in China is mainly driven by the informed trading of mutual funds. Utilizing the unique short term feature of mutual fund holdings for the period from 2001 to 2010, we provide an informational link between a decomposed component of market-to-book ratio (firm specific valuation component) and ...

In enhanced annuities, the annuity payment depends on one’s state of health at some contracted date while in ”standard annuities”, it does not. The focus of this paper is on an annuity market where ”standard” and enhanced annuities are offered simultaneously. When all insured know equally well on their future health status either enhanced annuities drive standard annuities out of the market or ...