Unbiased Performance of Endowment Investments

Do non-profit endowments beat the market with their investments? In their November 2018 paper entitled “Investment Returns and Distribution Policies of Non-Profit Endowment Funds”, Sandeep Dahiya and David Yermack estimate investment returns and distribution rates for a broad and unbiased (not self-reported or self-selected) sample of U.S. non-profit endowment funds. Using annual IRS Form 990 filings for 28,696 organizations and annual total returns for a capitalization-weighted U.S. Stock market index and a U.S. Treasuries index during 2009-2016, they find that:

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