Modelling of conditional volatilities and correlations across asset returns is an integral part of portfolio decision making and risk management. Over the past three decades there has been a trend towards increased asset return correlations across markets, a trend which has been accentuated...

We consider modeling errors in the hedging of a portfolio composed from BBB-rated bonds. By doing this, we open a new perspective to the debate on the relationship between corporate bonds and CDS spreads. We find that in ordinary times the added value of indexlinked credit derivatives is very...

We test relative illiquidity, exemplified through a temporary lock-up, as a partial explanation for the gap between theoretical and empirical weights for real estate in a multi-asset portfolio. Since asset correlations are known to increase in bear markets, reducing their diversification...

We examine international equity allocations at the fund level and show how different returns on the foreign and domestic proportion of portfolios determine rebalancing behavior and trigger capital flows. We document the heterogeneity of rebalancing across fund types, its greater intensity under...

This paper estimates ordered logit and probit regression models for bank ratings which also include a country index to capture country-specific variation. The empirical findings provide support to the hypothesis that the individual international bank ratings assigned by Fitch Ratings are...

We investigate the role of crude oil spot and futures prices in the process of price discovery by using a cost-of-carry model with an endogenous convenience yield and daily data over the period from January 1990 to December 2008. We provide evidence that futures markets play a more important...

Using the MIMIC method, this paper is a first attempt to estimate the size of the shadow economy of 158 countries over the period 1991 up to 2015. In addition to performing a variety of robustness tests, this paper explicitly addresses endogeneity concerns to the use of GDP as cause and...

We study the capacity to meet food demand under conditions of climate change, economic and population growth. We take a novel approach to quantifying climate impacts, based on a model of the global economy structurally estimated on the period 1960 to 2015. The model integrates several features...

Using the multiple indicator-multiple cause (MIMIC) approach, this paper generates a novel global database by estimating the size of the shadow economy for 157 countries over 1991 to 2017. The results suggest that the OECD countries are by far the lowest with values below 20% of off official GDP...

We present a detailed bubble analysis of the Bitcoin to US Dollar price dynamics from January 2012 to February 2018. We introduce a robust automatic peak detection method that classifies price time series into periods of uninterrupted market growth (drawups) and regimes of uninterrupted market...