Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2009
This paper reviews and extends definitions andproperties of the three classical performancestatistics (the Sharpe Ratio, the Treynor Index, andJensen's Alpha) by locating them in a more generalframework: the Asymmetric Response Mode. This allowsvarious notions of beta, which can be related todownside risk, to be employed, and includes, asspecial cases, a market timing model and themean-variance CAPM. Due to the general lack of dataon fund performance in practice, our emphasis is onsmall sample analysis where possible. We illustrateour results empirically using data on 15 U.S.-basedemerging markets investment funds.
Pedersen, Oliver, Wyman and Company and HonoraryAssociate of the Financial Econometrics Project,Department of Applied Economics, CambridgeUniversity; Sagchell, Faculty of Economics andPolitics, Cambridge University, Austin RobinsonBuilding, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DD,Great Britain. The authors thank Akhtar Siddique(the referee) for helpful comments. This articleis completely independent of Oliver, Wyman andCompany and the opinions expressed are those ofthe authors alone.