Mutual fund investors are concerned with the selection of the best fund in terms of performance among the set of alternative funds. This paper proposes an innovative mutual funds performance evaluation measure in the context of multicriteria decision making. We implement a multicriteria methodology using stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis, on Greek domestic equity funds for the per...

We investigate the effect of fund size on performance among active mutual funds. We first document that fund returns, both before and after management fees, decline with fund size, even after adjusting performance by various benchmarks and controlling for other fund characteristics such as turnover and age. We then explore a number of potential explanations for this relationship. We find that t...

This paper studies the relation between individuals’ mutual fund flows and fund characteristics, establishing three key results. First, consistent with tax motivations, individual investors are reluctant to sell mutual funds that have appreciated in value and are willing to sell losing funds. Second, individuals pay attention to investment costs as redemption decisions are sensitive to both exp...

This paper examines the relationship between seasonality, idiosyncratic risk and mutual fund returns using multifactor models. We use a large sample containing the return histories of 728 UK mutual funds over a 23-year period to measure fund performance. We present evidence that idiosyncratic risk cannot be eliminated, we also find evidence of seasonality in all fund categories. Specifically, w...

Building on insights from the economics of superstars, I develop an efficient method for estimating the skill of mutual fund managers. Outliers are especially helpful for disentangling skill from luck when I explicitly model the cross-sectional distribution of managerial skill using a flexible and realistic function. Forecasted performance is dramatically improved relative to standard regressio...

The aim of this paper is to estimate the overall performance of mutual funds in Croatia in terms of their relative efficiency based on several performance indicators using data envelopment analysis (DEA). DEA is a non-parametric method that can provide an overall relative efficiency score of a certain fund given a number of risk, cost or reward or profitability measures. Since traditional mutua...

This paper compares the two bootstrap methods of Kosowski et al. (2006) and Fama and French (2010) using a new dataset on equity mutual funds in the UK. We find that: the average equity mutual fund manager is unable to deliver outperformance from stock selection or market timing, once allowance is made for fund manager fees and for a set of common risk factors that are known to influence return...

We use a new dataset of hedge fund returns from a separate account platform to examine (1) how much of hedge fund return smoothing is due to main-fund specific factors, such as managerial reporting discretion (2) the costs of removing hedge fund share restrictions. These accounts trade pari passu with matching hedge funds but feature third-party reporting and permissive share restrictions. We u...

The Sharpe ratio is adequate for evaluating investment funds when the returns of those funds are normally distributed and the investor intends to place all his risky assets into just one investment fund. Hedge fund returns differ significantly from a normal distribution. For this reason, other performance measures for hedge fund returns have been proposed in both the academic and practiceorient...

How has the Fund institutionalized independent evaluation as a means of assessing its performance? This paper process-traces the contentious creation of the Fund’s Independent Evaluation Office (IEO). I use primary interviews conducted at the Fund headquarters in 2008–2010 and Fund archive documents dating back to the beginning of the debate over independent evaluation in 1992 to analyze the in...