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Full-Text Articles in Finance and Financial Management

Implied Measures Of Relative Fund Performance, Steve Hogan, Mitch Warachka Dec 2007

Implied Measures Of Relative Fund Performance, Steve Hogan, Mitch Warachka

Business Faculty Articles and Research

We evaluate the relative performance of funds by conditioning their returns on the cross-section of portfolio characteristics across fund managers. Our implied procedure circumvents the need to specify benchmark returns or peer funds. Instead, fund-specific benchmarks for measuring selection and market timing ability are constructed. This technique is robust to herding as well as window dressing and mitigates survivorship bias. Empirically, the conditional information contained in portfolio weights defined by industry sectors, assets, and geographical regions is important to the assessment of fund management. For each set of portfolio characteristics, we identify funds with success at either selecting securities or …


Oxytocin Increases Generosity In Humans, Paul J. Zak, Angela Stanton, Sheila Ahmadi Jan 2007

Oxytocin Increases Generosity In Humans, Paul J. Zak, Angela Stanton, Sheila Ahmadi

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Human beings routinely help strangers at costs to themselves. Sometimes the help offered is generous-offering more than the other expects. The proximate mechanisms supporting generosity are not well-understood, but several lines of research suggest a role for empathy. In this study, participants were infused with 40 IU oxytocin (OT) or placebo and engaged in a blinded, one-shot decision on how to split a sum of money with a stranger that could be rejected. Those on OT were 80% more generous than those given a placebo. OT had no effect on a unilateral monetary transfer task dissociating generosity from altruism. OT …


Evaluating The Nordea Experiment: Evidence From Market And Accounting Data, Lawrence G. Goldberg, Richard J. Sweeney, Clas Wihlborg Jan 2007

Evaluating The Nordea Experiment: Evidence From Market And Accounting Data, Lawrence G. Goldberg, Richard J. Sweeney, Clas Wihlborg

Business Faculty Articles and Research

This paper discusses results and difficulties of comparing banks’ performance based on publicly available data for the case of Nordea, a pan-Nordic bank created through mergers of important national banks. The objective is to determine whether Nordea’s unique strategy of functional integration across four countries can be advantageous. For stock-market data, however, Nordea does not have stable betas on risk factors, and thus the comparables method must be used with great care. The Nordea holding company performed about as well as the comparables, both in terms of stock-market and accounting data. Nordea banks in individual countries outperformed comparable holding companies; …