We investigate the implications of ambiguity aversion for retained earnings. We show that firms can eliminate distortions such as underinvestment by paying out earnings that maximizes shareholder wealth. We show that there is a negative relationship between ambiguity and retained earnings and...

How the correlation between equity returns behaves during market turmoils has been an issue of discussion in the international finance literature. Some research suggest an increase of correlation during volatile periods [Ang and Bekaert, 2002], while others argue its stability [Forbes and...

Copulas are extensively used for dependence modeling. In many cases the data does not reveal how the dependence can be modeled using a particular parametric copula. Nonparametric copulas do not share this problem since they are entirely data based. This paper proposes nonparametric estimation of...

We study the asymptotic properties of the Bernstein estimator for unbounded density copula functions. We show that the estimator converges to infinity at the corner. We establish its relative convergence when the copula is unbounded and we provide the uniform strong consistency of the estimator...

We propose a nonparametric estimator and a nonparametric test for Granger causality measures that quantify linear and nonlinear Granger causality in distribution between random variables. We first show how to write the Granger causality measures in terms of copula densities. We suggest a...

Theoretical risk factors underlying time-variations of risk premium across asset classes are typically unobservable or hard to measure by construction. Important examples include risk factors in Long Run Risk [LRR] structural models (Bansal and Yaron 2004) as well as stochastic volatility or...

We empirically investigate the short-run impact of anticipated and unanticipated unemployment rates on stock prices. We particularly examine the nonlinearity in stock market’s reaction to unemployment rate and study the effect at each individual point (quantile) of stock return distribution....

We propose a nonparametric estimator and a nonparametric test for Granger causality measures that quantify linear and nonlinear Granger causality in distribution between random variables. We first show how to write the Granger causality measures in terms of copula densities. We suggest a...

We present empirical evidence on whether the introduction of the euro has changed the effect of economic fundamentals on the growth rates of euro countries’ GDPpc and GDPpc volatility. We find that the effect of increments in debt on economic growth exhibits a structural break in 1999. A...