Two shrinkage estimators for the global minimum variance portfolio that dominate the traditional estimator with respect to the out-of-sample variance of the portfolio return are derived. The presented results hold for any number of observations n = d 2 and number of assets d = 4. The...

Banks face a tradeoff between diversifying and focusing their loan portfolio. In this paper we carry out an empirical study for the German market to shed light on the question whether or not the benefits of risk sharing outweigh those of specialization. We use data from the Bundesbank's...

The Value at Risk of a portfolio differs from the sum of the Values at Risk of the portfolio's components. In this paper, we analyze the problem of how a single economic risk figure for the Value at Risk of a hypothetical portfolio composed of different commercial banks might be obtained for a...

From a banking supervisory perspective, this paper analyses aspects of market risk of an aggregated trading portfolio comprised of the trading books of 11 German banks with a regulatory approved internal market risk model. Based on real, clean profit and loss data and Value-at-Risk estimates of...

We use portfolios of passive investment strategies to replicate the interest risk of banks' banking books. The following empirical statements are derived: (i) Changes in banks' present value and in their net interest income are highly correlated, irrespective of the banks' portfolio composition....

We use a unique dataset of German banks' exposure to interest rate risk to derive the following statements about their exposure to this risk and their earnings from term transformation. The systematic factor for the exposure to interest rate risk moves in sync with the shape of the term...

This study establishes necessary conditions for Almost Stochastic Dominance criteria of various orders. These conditions take the form of restrictions on algebraic combinations of moments of the probability distributions in question. The relevant set of conditions depends on the relevant order...

In a dynamic optimisation framework we show that the optimal tax evasion can be either a positive or a negative function of the tax rate according to the form of the fine to be paid when evasion is detected.

Both the expected-utility maximization and the hierarchy property are very important properties in stochastic dominance. For almost stochastic dominance, Leshno and Levy (2002) propose a definition and Tzeng et al. (2013) modified it to give another definition. This note provides more...

We study optimal dynamic compliance decisions in an uncertain environment. Contrary to the static literature, greater uncertainty affects consumption, not the optimal tax evasion rule. Thus, audit and sanctions rather than fiscal uncertainty should be used to control tax evasion.