Most people have a clear understanding of what the term 'family farm' means. This is especially true in Europe. The term refers, in a seemingly straightforward and unambiguous way, to well-known and self-evident realities. It is solidly internalised in the memory of most people, even those with...

Controlling and monitoring extreme downside market risk is important for financial risk management and portfolio/investment diversification. In this paper, we introduce a new concept of Granger causality in risk and propose a class of kernel-based tests to detect extreme downside risk spillover...

As projections have inflation heading back toward target and the labor market continuing to improve, the Federal Reserve has begun to contemplate an increase in the federal funds rate. There is however substantial uncertainty around these projections. How should this uncertainty affect monetary...

Since private equity investments are not publicly traded, a key issue in measuring investment risks of institutional private equity investors arises from a careful measurement of investment returns in the first place. Prices of private equity investments are typically observed at low frequency...

There is a renewed interest of banks and supervisors in operational risk. In the new Capital Adequacy Framework of June 1999 the Basel Committee calls for capital charges for operational risks as a component of Pillar one...

Praktiker wie Akademiker setzen sich im Allgemeinen mit Finanzrisiken vertieft auseinander und vernachlässigen dabei die übrigen Risiken. Damit geht ein unnötiger Wertverzehr einher...

In June 2003 Swiss banks held over CHF 500 billion in mortgages. This important segment accounts for about 63% of all loan portfolios of Swiss banks. Since default insurance is not common in Switzerland, the corresponding risks are a severe threat for the health of the financial system. We...

In this paper we discuss some statistical pitfalls that may occur in modeling cross-dependences with copulas in financial applications. In particular we focus on issues arising in the estimation and the empirical choice of copulas as well as in the design of time-dependent copulas.

This paper argues that observations of non-stationary choice behavior need notnecessarily imply specific properties of the individual’s discount function. As weshow, the observed “anomalies” in intertemporal choice can alternatively be explained by an individual’s perception of the risk...

The aim of this paper is to study the impact of bankruptcy law on financing, investment, default and liquidation decisions of firms. We build a model in which a firm can finance its investment by issuing debt. The investment is risky. Because of risk, the firm may default. The firm manager takes...