This paper explores the implications of systemic risk in Credit Structured Finance (CSF). Risk measurement issues loomed large during the 2007-08 financial crisis, as the massive, unprecedented number of downgrades of AAA senior bond tranches inflicted severe losses on banks, calling into...

Among the many controversial variables in finance, risk premia stand out for their lack of observability. Measuring premia as the difference between realized returns on risky and risk-free assets has not led to unanimous conclusions about their size, which greatly depends on the length of the...

For a class of long memory volatility models, we establish the asymptotic distribution theory of the Gaussian estimator and the Lagrange multiplier test. Both the case of estimation of martingale difference and ARMA levels are considered. A Montecarlo exercise is presented to assess the small...

This paper uses Garch models to estimate the objective and risk-neutral density functions of financial asset prices and, by comparing their shapes, recover detailed information on economic agents' attitudes toward risk. It differs from recent papers investigating analogous issues because it uses...

From a financial standpoint, the mechanics of the carry trade has been recently examined in Brunnermeier et al. (2009). They showed that shocks to interest rate differentials lead to carry trade activity and to significant reactions in the bilateral exchange rates vis-a-vis the US dollar that...

This paper investigates the relationship between futures prices and financial investments in derivatives of the main agricultural commodities. We first provide a broad picture of how these markets function and how they have evolved, showing that traders who deal mostly in commodity index...

This paper analyzes the impact of news on several Italian financial variables, paying particular attention to the effect on the conditional volatility of these variables. The analysis spans a period of great financial and political turbulence in Italy, including the rapid succession of three...

Theory suggests that uninsurable income risk induces individuals to accumulate assets as a precautionary reserve of value. Most assets, however, bear rate of return risk, that can be diversified only if every asset is traded by a large number of individuals and arbitrage is frictionless. Using...

This paper studies the provision of incentives in a universal bank. This is regarded as a (common) agent serving different clients with potentially conflicting interests; for example, it may buy assets on behalf of investors and sell assets on behalf of issuing firms. The clients offer incentive...

The analysis of the determinants and the effects on firm performance of venture capital finance for a sample of Italian enterprises indicates that small, young and more innovative firms are more likely to be financed by a venture capitalist. Our results confirm that venture capital can help...