Systemic crises can largely affect asset allocations due to the rapid deterioration of the risk-return trade-off. We investigate the effects of systemic crises, interpreted as global simultaneous shocks to financial markets, by introducing an investor adopting a crisis ignorant or crisis...

In this study we propose the use of the Student's t dependence function to model dependence between asset returns when conducting stress tests. To properly include stress testing in a risk management system, it is important to have accurate information about the (joint) probabilities of extreme...

This paper shows that stock market contagion operates through a domino effect, where small crashes evolve into more severe crashes. Using a novel unifying framework we model the occurrence of local, regional and global crashes in terms of past occurrences of these different crashes and financial...

The dependence between asset returns varies. Its strength can become stronger or weaker. Also, its structure can change, for example, when asymmetries related to bull and bear markets become more or less pronounced. To analyze these different types of variations, we develop a model that...

Bubbles can persist because investors are better off riding bubbles. We define bubbles in a natural way as significant, prolonged deviations from fundamental values measured by the well-known asset pricing models. Our real-time bubble detection system shows that –using US industry returns–...

The state of the equity market, often referred to as a bull or a bear market, is of key importance for financial decisions and economic analyses. Its latent nature has led to several methods to identify past and current states of the market and forecast future states. These methods encompass...

A wide range of empirical biases hampers hedge fund databases. In this paper we focus upon survival-related biases and disentangle look-ahead biases due to self-selection of funds and due to fund termination. Self-selection arises because funds voluntarily report their information to data...

We explore the flow-performance interrelation by explicitly separating the investment and divestment decisions of hedge fund investors. The results show that different determinants and evaluation horizons underlie both decisions. While money inflows are sensitive to past long-run performance,...

Hedge funds databases are typically subject to high attrition rates because of fund termination and self-selection. Even when all funds are included up to their last available return, one cannot prevent that ex post conditioning biases a.ect standard estimates of performance persistence. In this...

We decompose the conditional expected mutual fund return in five parts. Two parts, selectivity and expert market timing, can be attributed to manager skill, and three to variation in market exposure that can be achieved by private investors as well. The dynamic model that we use to estimate the...