We analyze the investment behavior of private clients concerning structured products. To ascertain their stated and revealed preferences, we use a questionnaire and a field experiment, respectively. The real product issued in the field experiment is comparable to one product in the questionnaire...

The goal of this paper is to assess, for the first time, the empirical impact of "Kaynes' beauty contest", or "higher order belief", on asset price volatility. The paper shows that heterogeneous expectations induce higher order beliefs and that heterogeneous expectation asset pricing models...

We examine the underpricing and long-term performance of a broad set ofSwiss IPOs from 1983 to 2000. The average market adjusted initial return is34.97%. Our results support the ex ante uncertainty hypothesis, the signal-ling hypothesis and, to some extent, the market cyclicality hypothesis...

This paper presents a new method to detect informed trading activities in the options markets.An option trade is identified as informed when it is characterized by an unusual largeincrement in open interest and volume, induces large gains, and is not hedged in the stock market.For the period...

Based on the APARCH model and two outlier detection methods, we computereliable time series of volatility asymmetry for 49 countries with relatively few ob-servations. Results show a steady increase in the asymmetry over the years for mostcountries. We nd that economic development and market...

Like many financial contracts, derivatives are subject to default risk. A very popular mechanism in derivatives markets to mitigate the risk of non-performance on contracts is margining. By attaching collateral to a contract, margining supposedly reduces default risk. The broader impacts of the...

Credit limit management is of paramount importance for successful short-term credit-risk management, even more so when the situation in credit and financial markets is tense. We consider a continuous-time model where the credit provider and the credit taker interact within a game-theoretic...

Most derivative contracts are traded over-the-counter, i.e., bilaterally between two counterparties. Recently, clearing services have become available that allow to transfer over-the-counter derivatives to a central counterparty (clearing house). We develop a framework to determine the effects...

We analyse questions of arbitrage in financial markets in which asset prices change in time as stationary stochastic processes. The main focus of the paper is on a model where the price vectors are independent and identically distributed. In the framework of this model, we find conditions that...