A new model is developed that augments a structural VAR specification with a GARCH covariance matrix. The model is utilised to study time series dependencies between three size-sorted portfolios from the Australian Stock Exchange. Even after accounting for contemporaneous correlations the...

Surveys of Australian superannuation funds verify that most international bond holdings, but not equity holdings, are hedged for currency risk. We compare the mean-variance efficiency of this practice with two alternative strategies: a conventional forward hedge; and a selective hedge triggered...

A new explanation for the well-known reluctance of retirees to buy life annuities is due to Milevsky and Young (2002, 2003). Specifically, the decision to buy longevity insurance is largely irreversible, so that the real option to delay annuitization generally has value. Milevsky and Young...

This paper develops concordance indices for studying the simultaneous occurrence of financial crises across markets and/or countries. The typically low incidence of financial crises necessitates a change in the definition of concordance from those recently developed for the business cycle...

The existing literature promotes a number of alternative methods to test for the presence of contagion during financial market crises. This paper reviews those methods, and shows how they are related in a unified framework. A number of extensions are also suggested which allow for multivarite...