This paper tests for the existence of contagion during the 1997/98 Asian crisis. We interpret contagion as a significant change in the way that country-specific shocks are transmitted across international stock markets. Using the full-information framework of Favero and Giavazzi (2002) we find...

We shed new light on the negative relationship between real stock returns or real interest rates and (i) post inflation, (ii) expected inflation, (iii) unexpected inflation and (iv) changes in expected inflation. Using the structural vector autoregression methodology, we propose a decomposition...

Empirical evidence shows that observed macroeconomic fundamentals have little explanatory power for nominal exchange rates (the exchange rate determination puzzle). On the other hand, the recent \microstructure approach to exchange rates" has shown that most exchange rate volatility at short to...

The informational content of changing risk for dynmaic asset allocation is analyzed in order to investigate its importance in determining expected index returns. We consider a class of optimal dynamic strategies taking into account both changing risk and expected returns that vary accordingly to...

The uncovered interest rate parity equation is the cornerstone of most models in international macro. However, this equation does not hold empirically since the forward discount, or interest rate differential, is negatively related to the subsequent change in the exchange rate. This forward...

In this paper we entertain the hypothesis that observed variations in income shares are the result of changes in the balance of power between workers and capital owners in labor relations. We show that this view implies that income share variations represent a risk factor of ¯rst-order...

We investigate the influence of various fundamental variables on a cross-section of credit default swap transaction data. Credit default swap rates can be seen as a superior proxy to credit risk than bond spreads are. Because we have transaction prices rather than quotes, we have thus...

We present a model in which a sovereign country optimally decides on its consumption and investment policies as well as on the optimal time to default. In the paper we allow the sovereign borrower to keep the fraction of its augmented wealth in so-called international reserves. We further assume...

We consider option pricing when dynamic portfolios are discretely rebalanced. The portfolio adjustments only occur after ¯xed relative changes in the stock price. The stock price follows a marked point process and the market is incomplete. We first characterisethe equivalent martingale...

The aim of the paper is to analyse the effects of different model specifications, within a general nested framework, on the valuation of defaultable bonds, and some credit derivatives. Assuming that the primitive variables such as the risk-free short rate, and the credit spread are affine...