The doctoral thesis of Louis Bachelier (1900) is widely considered as the seminal work inoption pricing theory. However, only a few years later, 1908, Vinzenz Bronzin, who wasa professor of actuarial science at the Accademia di Commercio e Nautica in Trieste,published a booklet (in German) on...

This paper originates in an email sent by the second author wondering whether the first author knewabout Bronzin’s booklet on option pricing, dating back almost a century and containing formulas whichappear rather similar to those developed by Black-Scholes. The scepticism of the first author...

This paper examines properties of mean-variance inefficient proxies with respect to producing a linear relation between expected returns and betas. The numerical results of a Monte Carlo simulation show that in the CAPM slightly inefficient, positively weighted proxies cause an almost perfect...

This paper investigates the impact of individual bank fundamental variables on stock market returns using data from a panel of 235 European banks from 1991 to 2005. The sample period marks a significant transition in the European banking sector, characterized by higher competition, lower profit...

Current discussions about public and private pension plans often state that the stock market is less risky in the long run than in the short run. Pension plans with their rather long planning horizon are therefore asked to increase the allocation to the stock market. Such statements, however,...

We investigate the impact of options listings on the variance of the underlyingstock returns in the Swiss equity market using a non-parametric approach.The emergence of multiple share categories in most Swiss firms,combined with the fact that (listed) options are typically not introduced onall...