The beta dispersion, which is the spread of betas on a stock market, can be interpreted as a measure of market vulnerability. This study examines the economic idea of the beta dispersion and its application as a market return predictor. Based on the empirical beta dispersion observed in the US...

During the global financial crisis, stressed market conditions led to skyrocketing corporate bond spreads that could not be explained by conventional modeling approaches. This paper builds on this observation and sheds light on time-variations in the relationship between systematic risk factors...

Using a unique data set that contains the complete ownership structure of the German stock market, we study the momentum and contrarian trading of different investor groups. Foreign investors and financial institutions, and especially mutual funds, are momentum traders, whereas private...

In this work, I study the impact of high-frequency trading (HFT) on price discovery and volatility in the Bund futures market. Using a new dataset based on microseconds, the focus of the study is on the reaction of high-frequency traders (HFTs) to major macroeconomic news events. I show that...

Investment funds are highly connected with each other, but also with the broader financial system. In this paper, we quantify potential vulnerabilities arising from funds' connectedness. While previous work exclusively focused on indirect connections (overlapping asset portfolios) between...

Is the asset management sector a source of financial instability? This paper contributes to the debate by performing a macroprudential stress test in order to quantify systemic risks in the mutual fund sector. For this purpose we include the welldocumented flow-performance relationship as an...