According to housing investment models, house prices and replacement costshould have an equilibrating relationship. Previous empirical work|mainlybased on aggregate-level data|has found only little evidence of such a relationship.By using a unique data set, covering transactions of...

The higher our aspirations, the higher the probability that we have to adjust them downwards when forming more realistic expectations later on. This paper shows that the costs induced by high aspirations are not trivial. We first develop a theoretical framework to identify the factors that...

This paper analyzes dynamic equilibrium risk sharing contracts between profit-maximizing intermediaries and a large pool of ex-ante identical agents that face idiosyncratic income uncertainty that makes them heterogeneous ex-post. In any given period, after having observed her income, the agent...

We consider the problem of optimal consumption for an investor who is risk and uncertainty avers. We model these preferences of the investor with the help of a convex risk-measure...

In semiparametric models it is a common approach to under-smooth the nonparametric functions inorder that estimators of the finite dimensional parameters can achieve root-n consistency. The requirementof under-smoothing may result as we show from inefficient estimation methods or technical...

With the recent availability of high-frequency nancial data the longrange dependence of volatility regained researchers' interest and has leadto the consideration of long memory models for realized volatility. Thelong range diagnosis of volatility, however, is usually stated for long...

Systemic weather risk is a major obstacle for the formation of private (non-subsidized) crop insurance. This paper explores the possibility of spatial diversication ofinsurance by estimating the joint occurrence of unfavorable weather conditions in dierentlocations. For that purpose copula...

Measuring and modeling financial volatility is the key to derivative pricing, asset allocation and risk management. The recent availability of high-frequency data allows for refined methods in this field. In particular, more precise measures for the daily or lower frequency volatility can be...

In this paper we provide a review of copula theory with applications to finance. We illustrate the idea on the bivariate framework and discuss the simple, elliptical and Archimedean classes of copulae. Since the copulae model the dependency structure between random variables, next we explain the...

Dimension reduction techniques for functional data analysis model and approximate smooth random functions by lower dimensional objects. In many applications the focus of interest lies not only in dimension reduction but also in the dynamic behaviour of the lower dimensional objects. The most...