Vol. 20, No. 2, 2022 by Bradford Cornell This paper is devoted primarily to asking questions about the implications of the growing focus on ESG (environment, social and governance) for investing and corporate financial policy rather than offering answers. Many of the questions raised here were anticipated by Milton Friedman in his classic New York… Read more
Articles
Exponential Glide Paths
Vol. 20, No. 1, 2022 by Moshe Levy and Haim Levy In the absence of market-timing ability, investors are better-off keeping their asset allocation constant through time. Target-date funds help reduce variation in the asset allocation, by taking into account that human capital, which is a part of the investor’s total portfolio and is typically… Read more
How Well Do Factor ETFS Capture the FAMA–French Factors?
Vol. 20, No. 1, 2022 by Nicholas Apergis, Thomas Poufinas, Alexandros Panagakis and Ioannis Ritsios Institutional investors are investigating systematic, rule-based investment directions other than purely passive investing, such as factor-based investing. This study examines how well the factor-ETFs capture the Fama–French factors and attempts to explain their difference from the smart beta indexes applied… Read more
Measuring the Economic and Academic Impact of Philanthropic Funding: The Breast Cancer Research Foundation
Vol. 20, No. 1, 2022 by Detelina Vasileva, Larry Norton, Marc Hurlbert and Andrew W. Lo Using survey data gathered from grantees of the nonprofit Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF), we investigated the commercial and non-commercial impacts of their research funding. We found significant impact in both domains. Commercially, 19.5% of BCRF grantees filed patents… Read more
Characteristic-Based Returns: Alpha or Smart Beta?
Vol. 20, No. 1, 2022 by Soohun Kim, Robert A. Korajczyk and Andreas Neuhierl We propose new methodology to construct arbitrage portfolios by utilizing information contained in firm characteristics for both abnormal returns and betas (and, therefore, smart-beta risk premiums). Our methodology gives maximal weight to risk-based interpretations of characteristics’predictive power before any attribution to… Read more
Relevance
Vol. 20, No. 1, 2022 by Megan Czasonis, Mark Kritzman and David Turkington The authors describe a new statistical method for improving forecasting called relevance. They describe their new method from both a conceptual and mathematical perspective, and they show how relevance links regressions to event studies and machine learning algorithms. View PDF… Read more
Good States, Bad States: What Do Options Tell Us About Schizophrenic Behavior of Mr. Market and What Can We Do About It?
Vol. 19, No. 4, 2021 Vineer Bhansali and Jeremie Holdom Option prices theoretically encapsulate participants’ expectations about good state (bullish) and bad state (bearish) market outcomes. By using a mixture of distributions and reasonable assumptions, the authors extract time series of expected returns, volatilities, and mixture probabilities of these outcomes surrounding the current US elections… Read more
How Do Factor Premia Vary Over Time? A Century of Evidence
Vol. 19, No. 4, 2021 Antti Ilmanen, Ronen Israel, Rachel Lee, Tobias J. Moskowitz and Ashwin Thapar Evaluating how factor premia vary over time and across asset classes is challenging due to limited time series data, especially outside of US equities. We examine four prominent factors across six asset classes over a century. We find… Read more
The U.S. Treasury Term Structure and the Distribution of Real GDP Growth
Vol. 19, No. 4, 2021 J. Benson Durham Narrowing at the front but not the long end of the yield curve, notably in both expected rates and term premiums, forecasts lower mean real GDP growth and widens the distribution. But despite undue emphasis among some practitioners and the popular press on outright inversion and recession… Read more
Private Equity Valuation Before and After ASC 820
Vol. 19, No. 4, 2021 Peter Easton, Stephannie Larocque and Jennifer Sustersic Stevens We examine the effect of ASC 820 (formerly SFAS 157) on valuations reported by US private equity funds to their investors. In 2008, the FASB implemented ASC 820 to achieve more consistent measurement and increased transparency in fair value reporting. This new… Read more