Seventy-five years of investing for future generations
Accepted version
Peer-reviewed
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Abstract
University endowments invest for future generations, so their strategy should reflect their long horizon. Our research question is whether they really do behave like long-term investors. We examine the behavior of U.S. endowments since 1945 and draw comparisons with earlier periods. Employing a long-run dataset on 12 major universities, we examine their preferences for risky assets and document their big strategic moves into equities and later into alternatives. We then analyse how they invest around crises and the extent to which they exploit their long-horizon advantage. We find that on average endowments do indeed invest countercyclically at such times, particularly when increasing their allocation to risky assets after a crisis.
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Keywords
Endowments and Foundations, Long Horizon Investing, Herding, Counter-Cyclical Investing, Asset Allocation
Journal Title
Financial Analysts Journal
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Journal ISSN
0015-198X
1938-3312
1938-3312
Volume Title
76
Publisher
Association for Investment Management and Research
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All rights reserved