Cristian Ioan Tiu

 

 

Assistant Professor of Finance

366 Jacobs Management Center

Department of Finance and Managerial Economics

School of Management

University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260

tel.   (716) 645-3299

fax  (716) 645-3823

email: ctiu@buffalo.edu

 


CV                                                    my SSRN page                          Finance Seminar


Research Interests:

 

    Investments: Institutional Investments, Hedge Funds, Endowment Funds

    Risk Management

    Asset Pricing


Papers Published/Forthcoming

(The descriptions are NOT abstracts!)

Decentralized Downside Risk Management (July 11, 2009)

(with Andrea Reed and Uzi Yoeli)

 

We propose a downside risk management method for decentralized investors. There are two novel things about this: one is that we treat return contributions from investment decisions and individual securities, which may be correlated, simultaneously. The other is that we prove a decomposition formula for downside risk and provide an interpretation for it. We then dissect the risk taken by university endowments ... and come up with findings that have something old (U.S. Equity matters), something new (hedge funds reduce the risk in a portfolio) and something borrowed (U.S. Fixed income reduces the risk in a portfolio).

 

 

Do Endowment Funds Select the Optimal Mix of Active and Passive Risk? (October 7, 2009)

(with Keith Brown)

Forthcoming at the Journal of Investment Management

 

Smaller endowments do not fully optimize their security selection abilities and because of internal frictions in the investment process leave money on the table.

 

Does Asset Allocation Determine Performance?:

Evidence from University Endowment Funds (July 2, 2009)

(with Keith Brown and Lorenzo Garlappi)

Forthcoming at the Journal of Financial Markets

 

If one wants to study how important asset allocation is in generating performance, university endowments are the ideal candidate, because they are virtually unrestricted and large enough to be diversified across asset classes. We find that the major determinant of performance, however, is the endowments' security selection abilities, and not their asset allocation.

 

On Level Curves of Value Functions in Optimization Models of Expected Utility

(with Thaleia Zariphopoulou), Mathematical Finance, Vol. 10, Issue 2, April 2000 

 

 

Working papers

 

Do the Best Hedge Funds Hedge? (December 17, 2008)

(with Sheridan Titman)

 

There is a lot of fuss about how hedge funds can be replicated using traditional or exotic 'systematic' risk factors. We find evidence that low R-square funds are better: they have better Sharpe ratios, higher returns and are better liked by their investors - low R-square managers charge higher fees and experience higher inflows. 

 

 

Asset Pricing with Endogenous Peso Effects (December 17, 2008)

(with Uzi Yoeli)

 

Peso models can solve a multitude of asset pricing puzzles, but the trick to assume the peso effect. We propose a very simple model where a decline in productivity triggers a peso effect. It's a model without anything fancy -- all the assumptions are borrowed from the literature, but when pieced together they work out just right to produce a peso model.

 

 

 


Teaching

 

MGF 636/696

The material is posted in UBLearns

 

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Some of my favorite companies

 

 

University at Buffalo Foundation

UTIMCO, my adoptive parents when I was a PhD student

DrudgeReport

ProtegePartners, a fund of funds

Albourne, a hedge fund consultant