The paper explores whether the co-movement of market returns and equity fundflows can be explained by a common response to macroeconomic news. I findthat variables that predict the real economy as well as the equity premium arerelated to mutual fund flows. Changes in dividend-price ratio explain...

This paper investigates the returns and °ows of German money marketfunds before and during the liquidity crisis of 2007/2008. The main¯ndings of this paper are: in liquid times, money market funds en-hanced their returns by investing in less liquid papers. By doing sothey outperformed other...

This paper investigates whether investor sentiment can explain stock returns on theGerman stock market. Based on a principal component analysis, we construct a senti-ment indicator that condenses information of several well-known sentiment proxies. Weshow that this indicator explains the return...

The paper deals with the evaluation of Collateralized Debt Obligations forinvestment purposes. CDOs are classified in the asset backed environment. Itsspecific risks (market, timing, recovery, agency) are discussed. To understand theportfolio aspect, the concept of the diversity score is...

We investigate the problem of modeling defaults of dependent credits.In the framework of the class of structural default models we studythreshold models where for each credit the underling ability-to-payprocess is a transformation of a Wiener processes. We propose a modelfor dependent defaults...

Defined-contribution plans represent a major organizational form for investors´ retirement savings. Today more than one third of all workers are enrolled in 401K plans.(...)

We investigate a consumption-based present value relation that is a function of future dividend growth. Using data on aggregate consumption and measures of the dividend payments from aggregate wealth, we show that changing forecasts of dividend growth are an important feature of the post-war...