Over that span, the authors say, no company consistently outperformed the average of its industry.
According to Morningstar, the fund has outperformed the average for its peers over the last 3, 5 and 10 years.
"Three nonselective high schools in Fairfax, Va., outperformed the average of virtually every country in the world".
By contrast, the average small-cap stock outperformed the average large-cap issue during that period by only 2.9 percentage points, annualized, according to the researchers.
Since Thomas took over the fund in 2003 it has outperformed the average globally invested fund by around 40%, although over the past year it mildly underperformed.
Over the last 1, 3, 5 and 10 years, only European index funds have consistently outperformed the average actively managed fund focusing on their regions.
The only major metric I looked at wherein today's recovery outperformed the average expansion of the previous 60 years was corporate profits.
Likewise, McKinsey & Company found that the international companies with more women on their corporate boards far outperformed the average company in return on equity and other measures.
A sensible blend of off-the-shelf bond and equity products has comfortably outperformed the average hedge fund in recent years.
However, the study by Prof Merryn Hutchings, Prof Becky Francis and Dr Philip Kirby also found that successful academy chains produced strong results for disadvantaged students; almost a third of them outperformed the average for all state-funded secondary schools.
Ludovic Phalippou, in work on his Ph.D. dissertation at Insead, the business school near Paris, has found out why the average value stock fund has not outperformed the average growth stock fund.
