The paper investigates for the first time a variety of different smart beta strategies for the German DAX 30 and MDAX stocks sample. All strategies show a superior Sharpe-Ratio thanks to a higher return or lower volatility compared to the market index. Furthermore, the authors find a significant Carhart-four-factor alpha for almost all alternative strategies for the time span from 2000 to 2013. For an annual rebalancing, the outperformance still remains after controlling for transaction costs.
A working paper version of the paper (in German) can be found here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2536411