Since the 2008 financial crisis, a resurgence of interest in economic and financial history has occurred among investment professionals. This book discusses some of the lessons drawn from the past that may help practitioners when thinking about their portfolios. The book’s editors, David Chambers and Elroy Dimson, are the academic leaders of the Newton Centre for Endowment Asset Management at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

The Research Foundation Review 2016 summarizes the offerings from the CFA Institute Research Foundation over the past year—monographs, literature reviews, workshop presentations, and other relevant material.

This book addresses the divide that exists between the reality of finance and the image it projects. A functioning financial system is an essential feature of a modern economy, providing it with money, credit, capital, and investments. Conversely, those who provide this essential service are neither respected nor trusted. The causes and consequences of this divide is explored using the British experience from 1800 to the present, drawing upon a mixture of factual evidence and contemporary fiction. Nothing of this scale has been attempted before and this is the product of 50 years of research.

Economists broadly define financial asset price bubbles as episodes in which prices rise with notable rapidity and depart from historically established asset valuation multiples and relationships. Financial economists have for decades attempted to study and interpret bubbles through the prisms of rational expectations, efficient markets, and equilibrium, arbitrage, and capital asset pricing models, but they have not made much if any progress toward a consistent and reliable theory that explains how and why bubbles (and crashes) evolve and can also be defined, measured, and compared. This book develops a new and different approach that is based on the central notion that bubbles and crashes reflect urgent short-side rationing, which means that, as such extreme conditions unfold, considerations of quantities owned or not owned begin to displace considerations of price.

Governance is a word that is increasingly heard and read in modern times, be it corporate governance, global governance, or investment governance. Investment governance, the central concern of this modest volume, refers to the effective employment of resources—people, policies, processes, and systems—by an individual or governing body (the fiduciary or agent) seeking to fulfil their fiduciary duty to a principal (or beneficiary) in addressing an underlying investment challenge. Effective investment governance is an enabler of good stewardship, and for this reason it should, in our view, be of interest to all fiduciaries, no matter the size of the pool of assets or the nature of the beneficiaries. To emphasize the importance of effective investment governance and to demonstrate its flexibility across organization type, we consider our investment governance process within three contexts: defined contribution (DC) plans, defined benefit (DB) plans, and endowments and foundations (E&Fs). Since the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the financial sector’s place in the economy and its methods and ethics have (rightly, in many cases) been under scrutiny. Coupled with this theme, the task of investment governance is of increasing importance due to the sheer weight of money, the retirement savings gap, demographic trends, regulation and activism, and rising standards of behavior based on higher expectations from those fiduciaries serve. These trends are at the same time related and self-reinforcing. Having explored the why of investment governance, we dedicate the remainder of the book to the question of how to bring it to bear as an essential component of good fiduciary practice. At this point, the reader might expect investment professionals to launch into a discussion about an investment process focused on the best way to capture returns. We resist this temptation. Instead, we contend that achieving outcomes on behalf of beneficiaries is as much about managing risks as it is about capturing returns—and we mean “risks” broadly construed, not just fluctuations in asset values.

Economists broadly define financial asset price bubbles as episodes in which prices rise with notable rapidity and depart from historically established asset valuation multiples and relationships. Financial economists have for decades attempted to study and interpret bubbles through the prisms of rational expectations, efficient markets, equilibrium, arbitrage, and capital asset pricing models, but they have not made much if any progress toward a consistent and reliable theory that explains how and why bubbles (and crashes) evolve and are defined, measured, and compared. This book develops a new and different approach that is based on the central notion that bubbles and crashes reflect urgent short-side rationing, which means that, as such extreme conditions unfold, considerations of quantities owned or not owned begin to displace considerations of price.

This monograph is a collection of articles on productivity and related topics submitted by speakers at an interdisciplinary November 2017 conference sponsored by, among others, the CFA Institute Research Foundation, with additional articles solicited by the editors from noted experts on the field.

The Research Foundation Review 2017 summarizes the offerings from the CFA Institute Research Foundation over the past year—books, literature reviews, workshop presentations, and other relevant material.

Research Foundation Review 2019 presents the offerings from CFA Institute Research Foundation during 2019. We start with an overview, summarize the year's output, and end with other relevant material, such as awards and recognition.

This book provides a detailed analysis of mutual fund regulations and governance in the UK from the investor protection perspective. It comprehensively describes mutual funds by their function, social utility, and legal attributes, examining the level of protection provided to retail investors under existing regulations. Mutual funds are externally managed with fund ownership separated out from their management, which carries a potential conflict of interest between the self-interests of the fund management and each fund’s investors. The book provides an in-depth analysis of this agency problem in the mutual fund industry, comparing the competing governance models in the UK and the US and the supervision of management activities. In the UK, it investigates the main governance mechanisms, including disclosure, the effectiveness of voting rights, and the role of the Financial Conduct Authority in protecting investors. It also considers the role of prudential regulations in protecting mutual fund investors, with a particular focus on risk management and mutual fund liquidity crisis. The book further investigates the impact of the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union (Brexit) on the industry and what this means for the future of the undertakings for collective investment in transferable securities (UCITS) in the UK. The concept of mutual funds is still not clearly understood, so this book will clearly define the different legal and practical aspects of mutual funds. It will be the first substantial study of mutual fund governance mechanisms under the existing mutual fund laws and regulations in the UK.