• Selected
• Entire List

Abstract:
We examine the performance of the off-shore hedge fund industry over the period 1989 through 1995 using a database that includes both defunct and currently operating funds. The industry is characterized by high attrition rates of funds, low covariance with the U.S. stock market, evidence consistent with positive risk-adjusted returns over the time, but little evidence of differential manager skil.

Abstract:
We summarize some of our own past findings and place them in the context of the historical development of the idea of the equity risk premium and its empirical measurement by financial economists. In particular, we focus on how the theory of compensation for investment risk developed in the 20th century in tandem with the empirical analysis of historical investment performance. Finally, we update our study of the historical performance of the New York Stock Exchange over the period 1792 to the present, and include a measure of the U.S. equity risk premium over more than two centuries. This last section is based upon indices constructed from individual stock and dividend data collected over a decade of research at the Yale School of Management, and contributions by other scholars.

financial history, equity premium

Abstract:
We estimate the forward-looking long-term equity risk by extrapolating the way it participated in the real economy. We decompose the 1926-2000 historical equity returns into supply factors including inflation, earnings, dividends, price to earnings ratio, dividend payout ratio, book value, return on equity, and GDP per capita. There are several key findings: First, the growth in corporate productivity measured by earnings is in line with the growth of overall economic productivity. Second, P/E increases account for only a small portion of the total return of equity (1.25% of the total 10.70%). The bulk of the return is attributable to dividend payments and nominal earnings growth (including inflation and real earnings growth). Third, the increase in factor share of equity relative to the overall economy can be more than fully attributed to the increase in the P/E ratio. Fourth, there is a secular decline in the dividend yield and payout ratio, rendering dividend growth alone a poor measure of corporate profitability and future growth. Contrary to several recent studies, our supply side model forecast of the equity risk premium is only slightly lower than the pure historical return estimate. The long-term equity risk premium (relative to the long-term government bond yield) is estimated to be about 6% arithmetically, and 4% geometrically. Our estimate is in line with both the historical supply measures of the public corporations (i.e., earnings) and the overall economic productivity (GDP per capita).

Equity Risk Premium

Abstract:
In this paper, we focus on two issues. First, we analyze the potential biases in reported hedge fund returns, in particular survivorship bias and backfill bias, and attempt to create an unbiased return sample. Second, we decompose these returns into their three A,B,C components: the value added by hedge funds (alphas), the systematic market exposures (betas), and the hedge fund fees (costs). We analyze the performance of a universe of about 3,500 hedge funds from the TASS database from January 1995 through April 2006. Our results indicate that both survivorship and backfill biases are potentially serious problems. The equally weighted performance of the funds that existed at the end of the sample period had a compound annual return of 16.45% net of fees. Including dead funds reduced this return to 13.62%. Excluding backfill further reduced the return to 8.98%, net of fees. In this last sample, we estimate a pre-fee return of 12.72%, which we split into a fee (3.74%), an alpha (3.04%), and a beta return (5.94%). Overall, even after correcting for data biases, we find that the alphas are significantly positive and are approximately equal to the fees, meaning that excess returns were shared roughly equally between hedge fund managers and their investors.

hedge fund, costs, alpha, beta, returns, sources

Abstract:
In this paper, we collect individual stock prices for NYSE stocks over the period 1815 to 1925 and individual dividend data over the period 1825 to 1870. We use monthly price and dividend information on more than 600 individual securities over the period to estimate a stock price index and total return series that extends virtually to the beginning of the New York Stock Exchange. We use this data to estimate the power of past returns and dividend yields to forecast future long-horizon returns. We find some evidence of predictabiity in sub-periods but little predictability over the long term. We estimate the time-varying volatility of the U.S. market over the period 1815 to 1925 and find evidence of a leverage effect on risk. This new database will allow future researchers to test a broad range of hypotheses about the U.S. capital markets in a rich, untouched sample.

Abstract:
Several studies have found that considerable persistence exists in mutual fund performance. We study this phenomenon in fund managers who achieve superior performance, after adjusting for the investment style of the fund. Our data of domestic equity mutual funds indicates that winning funds do repeat good performance. Style-adjusted alphas are evaluated on both an absolute and relative basis. The highest persistence is exhibited by funds whose alpha is greater than 10% and also by funds whose alpha ranks in the top 5% of the sample.

Abstract:
Financial planners and advisors have recently started to recognize that human capital must be taken into account when building optimal portfolios for individual investors. But human capital is not just another pre-endowed asset class that must be included as part of the portfolio frontier. An investor's human capital contains a unique mortality risk, which is the loss of all future income and wages in the unfortunate event of premature death. However, life insurance in its various guises and incarnations can hedge against this mortality risk. Thus, human capital affects both the optimal asset allocation and the optimal demand for life insurance. Yet historically, asset allocation and life insurance decisions have consistently been analyzed separately both in theory and practice. In this paper, we develop a unified framework based on human capital in order to enable individual investors to make both decisions jointly. We investigate the impact of the magnitude of human capital, its volatility, and its correlation with other assets as well as bequest preferences and subjective survival probabilities on the optimal portfolio of life insurance and traditional asset classes. We do this through five case studies that implement our model. Indeed, our analysis validates some intuitive rules of thumb but provides additional results that are not immediately obvious.

Human Capital, Asset Allocation, Life Insurance

Abstract:
We examine the performance of the offshore hedge fund industry over the period 1989 through 1995 using a database that includes defunct as well as currently operating funds. The industry is characterized by high attrition rates of funds and little evidence of differential manager skill. We develop endogenous style categories for relative fund performance measures and find that repeat-winner and repeat-loser patterns in the data are largely due to style effects in that data.

Abstract:
We examine the performance of the offshore hedge fund industry over the period 1989 through 1995 using a database that includes defunct as well as currently operating funds. The industry is characterized by high attrition rates of funds and little evidence of differential manager skill. We develop endogenous style categories for relative fund performance measures and find that repeat-winner and repeat-loser patterns in the data are largely due to style effects in that data.

Abstract:
We examine the performance of the off-shore hedge fund industry over the period 1989-1995 using a database that includes both defunct and currently operating funds. The industry is characterized by high attrition rates of funds, low covariance with the U.S. stock market, evidence consistent with positive risk-adjusted returns over the time, but little evidence of differential manager skill.

Abstract:
"Hot issue" markets, which refer to instances when stocks increase their offering prices to a level greater than average market premiums, have been overlooked in recent academic literature. Thus, this research examines factors which may aid in the prediction of hot issue markets. A sample of unseasoned stock issues offered between January 1, 1960 and October 31, 1970 is compiled, noting the stock's original offering price and their first two months' ending bids. In order to understand overall market performance during this time, data was also collected from the daily Standard & Poor 500 (S&P) Index. A time series analysis of new issue performance is utilized to examine several relationships, including the following: the connection between new issue performance in a particular month and that of other new issues in preceding months; the correlation between new issue premiums and aftermarket performance; the association between the number of monthly new offerings and simultaneous new issue premiums; and finally the correlation between new issue premiums and past market performance. Several implications for investors, issuers, and researchers are presented, as are directions for future research. The findings indicate that a level of predictability exists within the first month's residuals, which has implications for the timing of offerings and new issue purchases. A higher offering price, when compared to a cold issue market's efficient prices, may be obtained by issuers during that first month's issuance. (AKP)

Underwriting, Securities, Stock offerings, Initial public offerings (IPO), Investors

Abstract:
Financial planners and advisors increasingly recognize that human capital must be taken into account when building optimal portfolios for individual investors. But human capital is not simply another pre-endowed asset class; it contains a unique mortality risk in the form of the loss of future income and wages in the event of the wage earner's death. Life insurance hedges this mortality risk, so human capital affects both optimal asset allocation and demand for life insurance. Yet, historically, asset allocation and life insurance decisions have been analyzed separately. This article develops a unified framework based on human capital that enables individual investors to make these decisions jointly.

Private Wealth Management, Asset Allocation, Client Objectives Constraints and Behavior, Investment Policy Formulation

Abstract:
In the study reported here, we estimated the forward-looking long-term equity risk premium by extrapolating the way it has participated in the real economy. We decomposed the 1926-2000 historical equity returns into supply factors-inflation, earnings, dividends, the P/E, the dividend-payout ratio, book value, return on equity, and GDP per capita. Key findings are the following. First, the growth in corporate productivity measured by earnings is in line with the growth of overall economic productivity. Second, P/E increases account for only a small portion of the total return of equity. The bulk of the return is attributable to dividend payments and nominal earnings growth (including inflation and real earnings growth). Third, the increase in the equity market relative to economic productivity can be more than fully attributed to the increase in the P/E. Fourth, a secular decline has occurred in the dividend yield and payout ratio, rendering dividend growth alone a poor measure of corporate profitability and future growth. Our forecast of the equity risk premium is only slightly lower than the pure historical return estimate. We estimate the expected long-term equity risk premium (relative to the long-term government bond yield) to be about 6 percentage points arithmetically and 4 percentage points geometrically.

Portfolio Management, Asset Allocation

Abstract:
This article reviews the empirical risk and return statistics from physical real estate and financial real estate investments made in the U.S. over the period 1972-1999. It includes income, capital appreciation, and total returns from business, residential, and farm real estate, as well as REIT equity and mortgages. These investments are compared to U.S. stocks, bonds, inflation, and other asset categories. The advantages and disadvantages of investing in the real estate are enumerated.

Real Estate

Abstract:
Does asset allocation policy explain 40 percent, 90 percent, or 100 percent of performance? According to some well-known studies, more than 90 percent of the variability of a typical plan sponsor's performance over time is attributable to asset allocation. However, few people want to explain variability over time. Instead, an analyst might want to know how important it is in explaining the differences in return from one fund to another, or what percentage of the level of a typical fund's return is the result of asset allocation. To address these aspects of the role of asset allocation policy, we investigated these three questions.

1. How much of the variability of returns across time is explained by asset allocation policy?

2. How much of the variation of returns among funds is explained by differences in asset allocation policy?

3. What portion of the return level is explained by returns to asset allocation policy?

We examined 10 years of monthly returns to 94 balanced mutual funds and 5 years of quarterly returns to 58 pension funds. For the mutual funds, we used return-based style analysis for the entire 120-month period to estimate policy weights for each fund. We carried out the same type of analysis on quarterly returns of 58 pension funds for the five-year 1993-97 period. For the pension funds, rather than estimated policy weights, we used the actual policy weights and asset-class benchmarks of the pension funds.

We answered the three questions as follows:

#1: We regressed each fund's total returns against its policy return and recorded the RSQ value for each fund in the study. We found that, on average, about 90 percent of the variability of returns of a typical fund across time is explained by asset allocation policy. Most of a fund's ups and downs are explained by the ups and downs of the overall market.

#2: We ran a cross-sectional regression of compound annual fund returns for the entire period on compound annual policy returns. We found that about 40 percent of the variation of returns from one fund to another is explained by policy return differences. For example, among mutual funds, if one fund's return is 13 percent and another fund's return is 8 percent, then on average, about 2 percent of the difference is explained by the difference in asset mix policy; the remaining 3 percent difference is explained by other factors, such as timing, security selection, and fee differences between the funds.

#3: For each fund, we divided the compound annual policy return for the entire period by the compound annual fund return. We found that, on average, about 100 percent of the return level is explained by the return to asset allocation policy. Thus, the average fund's return to asset-mix policy is about the same as the return to the benchmarks for the asset classes.

In summary, our analysis shows that asset allocation explains about 90 percent of the variability of a fund's returns over time but explains only about 40 percent of the variation of returns among funds. Furthermore, on average across funds, asset allocation policy explains slightly more than 100 percent of the levels of returns. Thus, the answer to the question of whether asset allocation policy explains 40 percent, 90 percent, 100 percent of performance, depends on how the question is interpreted.

Abstract:
We examine the performance of the off-shore hedge fund industry over the period 1989 through 1995 using a database that includes both defunct and currently operating funds. The industry is characterized by high attrition rates of funds, low covariance with the U.S. stock market, evidence consistent with positive risk-adjusted returns over the time, and little evidence of differential manager skill.

Abstract:
This paper analyzes a new database of substantially all stocks listed on the NYSE over its early history. We collect prices and dividends from primary sources -- i.e. financial periodicals -- for all listed stocks on the New York Stock Exchange over its early history. We construct a monthly index of NYSE equity prices over the 1815-1871 period, and a monthly index with dividends over the 1825-1871 period. We find that NYSE equities returned between 7.7% and 11.8% per year in arithmetic terms between the years 1825 and 1871. We also find that income returns represented a high proportion of total return for stocks in the nineteenth century. This may be due to differences in taxation, or may be due to the changing public attitude towards substitution of capital gains for income.