In 2010, Maryland became the first state to allow firms to incorporate as “benefit corporations,” which are for-profit entities with a social purpose. Since then, nineteen other states have followed. Using survey data from the population of 94 benefit corporations existent at the time of the...

About 21 years after establishment of the first Islamic banks in Indonesia, the share of Islamic banks is still small. About 86 percent Indonesian are Muslim, yet the asset share of Indonesian Islamic banks is only about 4 percent. Since Islamic scholars unanimously argue that bank interests are...

Behavioral finance studies the application of psychology to finance, with a focus on individual-level cognitive biases. I describe here the sources of judgment and decision biases, how they affect trading and market prices, the role of arbitrage and flows of wealth between more rational and less...

This paper uses the cross-sectional variance of the betas from the CAPM model to study herd behavior towards market index in Romania. For time-varying beta determination, three different modeling techniques are employed: two bivariate GARCH models (DCC and FIDCC GARCH), two Kalman filter based...

First externalities risk due to the size of the companies or the principle that large companies are also at risk of bankruptcy (too big to fail) are examined. The problem is illustrated by a case in which extreme risks with negative consequences for savers and investors are taken. If we...

In this paper, using network tools, I analyse systemic impacts of liquidity shocks in interbank market in case of endogenous haircuts. Gai, Haldane and Kapadia (2011) introduce a benchmark for liquidity crisis following haircut shocks, and Gorton and Metrick (2010) reveal the evidence from...

The main objective of this paper is to present a reading of The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin in the context of the financial crisis, in particular, reflect from a few fragments of Benjamin's work appear to lie around a Black Swan. The recovery of the fragments of The Arcades seems...

Tail hedging is a portfolio management strategy meant to reduce the risk of large losses. For an investor who holds a stock market index fund, the strategy entails buying out of the money put options on the index. Research suggests the strategy works well in practice and I explore the returns to...

This paper studies the particularities of portfolio selection on the Romanian stock market using the risk-return maximization criteria introduced by Harry Markowitz (1952). We used daily prices for the 36 most liquid companies traded on Bucharest Stock Exchange during January 2010 – March 2012...

One of the challenges face a country or firm when deciding to lend a foreign country or firm is how to appraise the creditworthiness of that firm or country? It is experienced and commonly use of credit ratings established by Credit Rating Agencies (Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s and Pitch) as...