Luck versus Skill in the Cross-Section of Mutual Fund Returns: Reexamining the Evidence
95 Pages Posted: 2 Jul 2020 Last revised: 18 Oct 2021
Date Written: October 17, 2021
Abstract
Both Kosowski et al. (2006) and Fama and French (2010) evaluate whether mutual funds outperform, but their conclusions are very different. We reconcile their findings. We show that the Fama and French method suffers from an undersampling problem that leads to a failure to reject the null hypothesis of zero alpha, even when some funds generate economically large risk-adjusted returns. In contrast, Kosowski et al. substantially over reject the null hypothesis, even when all funds have a zero alpha. We present a novel bootstrapping approach that should be useful to future researchers who are choosing between the two approaches.
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Keywords: Performance evaluation, alpha, active management, bootstrapping, market efficiency, fund management, oversampling, undersampling, Type I errors, Type II errors
JEL Classification: G11, G12, G23, C58
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation