Applied researchers often test for the difference of the variance of two investment strategies;in particular, when the investment strategies under consideration aim to implementthe global minimum variance portfolio. A popular tool to this end is the F-test for theequality of variances....

Die klassische, von Markowitz entwickelte, Portfoliotheorie basiert auf spezifischen Risikomaßen, der Renditevarianz bzw. der Renditestandardabweichung. Diese Risikomaße messen primär die Volatilität der Renditeentwicklung...

It is well known that mean-variance portfolio selection is a time-inconsistent optimalcontrol problem in the sense that it does not satisfy Bellman’s optimalityprinciple and therefore the usual dynamic programming approach fails. We developa time-consistent formulation of this problem, which...

We derive an explicit formula of the Watts’ poverty index, in terms of parametersof bivariate lognormal distributions of price indices and nominal livingstandards. This result enables us to: analyse the contributions of the distributionsof prices and nominal living standards in poverty;...

This study explores the information content of HML and SMB by linking the Fama-French factors toshocks in the state variables which predict future investment opportunities. It shows that the HMLfactor contains information about shocks to default spread. Moreover, the Fama-French modelexplains...

We explore the pricing of variance risk by decomposing stocks' total variance into systematicand idiosyncratic return variances. While systematic variance risk exhibits a negative priceof risk, common shocks to the variances of idiosyncratic returns carry a large positive riskpremium. This...

Multilevel models are widely used in education and social science research. However, theeffects of omitting levels of the hierarchy on the variance decomposition and the clusteringeffects have not been well documented...

Variance contracts permit the trading of ’variance risk’, i.e. the risk that the realizedvariance of stock returns changes randomly over time. We discuss why investorsmight want to trade this type of risk, and why they might prefer a variance contractto standard calls and puts for this...

A random variable dominates another random variable with respectto the covariance order if the covariance of any two monotone increasingfunctions of this variable is smaller. We characterize completely thecovariance order, give strong sufficient conditions for it, present a numberof examples in...

We consider a simple random walk process, a special case ofthe Martingale model, which exhibits a deterministic break in its drift term,for instance, from positive to negative. This particular example can be aplausible model for a time series on exchange rates which displays a persistentcurrency...