We show that including distribution costs into a general equilibrium model of international portfolio choice contributes to explaining the “home bias” in international equity investment. Our model is able to replicate observed investment positions for a wide range of parameter values, even...

Theory of financial intermediation gives contradicting answers to the question whether banks should diversify or focus their loan portfolios. Our aim is to find out which of the two strategies is predominant in the German banking market. To this end we measure diversification for all German...

"Arbitrage CDOs" have recorded an explosive growth during the years before the outbreak of the financial crisis. In the present paper we discuss potential sources of such arbitrage opportunities, in particular arbitrage gains due to mispricing. For this purpose we examine the risk profiles of...