Traditional risk-adjusted performance measures, such as the Sharpe ratio, the Treynor index or Jensen's alpha, based on the mean-variance framework, are widely used to rank mutual funds. However, performance measures that consider risk by taking into account only losses, such as Value-at-Risk...

In this paper, we develop a financial stress index for France that can be used as a real-time composite indicator for the state of financial stability in France. We take 17 financial variables from different market segments and extract a common stress component using a dynamic approximate factor...

The determinants of default risk of banks in emerging economies have so far received inadequate attention in the literature. This paper seeks to study the determinants of bank asset quality and profitability using panel data techniques and robust data sets for the period between 1997 and 2009....

This paper addresses the question of whether and how easy monetary policy may lead to excesses in financial and real asset markets and ultimately result in financial dislocation. It presents evidence suggesting that periods when short-term interest rates have been persistently and significantly...

The fiscal and financial reforms carried out in Mexico in 2000 have encouraged a widespread presence of rating agencies and have allowed several States and unicipalities to raise funds through bond offerings in the capital market. Any local government in Mexico intending to access credit and...

This paper evaluates the evolution of European venture capital investments since 1990, using the distribution dynamics methodology. It tests and rejects the hypothesis that the international allocation of venture capital investments is driven by a pathdependent process of agglomeration, in which...

This paper investigates the role of regional financial development, in addition to FDI, for regional innovation in China, using a more recent provincial dataset and more sophisticated panel data estimation techniques than previous studies. Two aspects of regional financial system development are...

Foreign exchange rates, asset prices and capital movements are expected to be closely related to each other as international capital markets become more and more integrated. This paper provides new empirical evidence from an index of exchange-rate adjusted cross-country asset price ratios, which...

This Kiel Policy Brief demonstrates the calculation of a new stock market index informing about the price competitiveness of a country's assets vis-à-vis its foreign competitors. In line with the portfolio balance approach we empirically identify net foreign holdings of a country's assets as...