We study what makes government bonds a safe asset. Building on a sample of monthly changes in government bond yields in 40 advanced and emerging countries, we analyse the sensitivity of yields to country specific fundamentals interacted with changes in global risk (VIX). We find that inertia...

We present a two-country model with an enhanced banking sector featuring risky lending and cross-border interbank market frictions. We find that (i) the strength of the financial accelerator, when applied to banks operating under uncertainty in an interbank market, will critically depend on the...

This paper analyses the incidence and severity of sudden stops in euro area countries before and after the introduction of the ECB's asset purchase programmes. We define sudden stops as abrupt declines in private net financial inflows, i.e. total flows adjusted for EU and IMF loans and changes...

In this paper, we study the effects of structural shocks that influence global risk - the main factor behind a "global capital flows cycle" - and how risk, in turn, is transmitted to capital flows. Our results show that not all the risk shocks driving the global financial cycle have the same...

The redistribution of resources in global stock markets is prevalent: the capital is transferred from one investor to another. Sometimes, earning a substantial return in the stock market seems complicated to implement for an individual investor. Investing contributes to the welfare of society...

We empirically test predictability on asset price using stock selection rules based on maximum drawdown and its consecutive recovery. In various equity markets, monthly momentum- and weekly contrarian-style portfolios constructed from these alternative selection criteria are superior not only in...

This paper investigates the investment performance of Malaysian Islamic equity funds and a matching sample of conventional equity funds relative to their market benchmark. An integrated model is used to simultaneously capture the market timing and selectivity skills of fund managers. Our...

The expansion of investment strategies and capital markets is altering the significance and empirical rationality of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. The vitality of capital markets is essential for efficiency research. The authors explore here the development and contemporary status of the...

The trend towards eliminating defined benefit (DB) pension plans in favour of defined contribution (DC) plans implies that increasing numbers of pension plan participants will bear the risk that final realized portfolio values may be insufficient to fund desired retirement cash flows. We compare...

Recent event study literature has highlighted abnormal stock returns, particularly in short event windows. A common explanation is the cross-correlation of stock returns that are often enhanced during periods of sharp market movements. This suggests the misspecification of the underlying factor...