In theory, investors choosing to invest only in socially responsible entities restrict their investment universe and should thus be penalized in a mean-variance framework. When computed, this penalty is usually viewed as valid for all socially responsible investors. This paper shows however that...

The aim of this paper is to measure the cost of investing responsibly for different risk aversion levels by taking the example of green sovereign bond portfolios. We show that for developed markets, the cost of being a nice guy is lower if you are cautious (i.e. a higher level of risk aversion)...

This paper provides a broad empirical examination of the major currencies' roles in international capital markets, with a special emphasis on the first year of the Euro. A contribution is made as to how to measure these roles, both for international financing as well as for international...

A quadratic discrete time probabilistic model, for optimal portfolio selection in (re-)insurance is studied. For positive values of underwriting levels, the expected value of the accumulated result is optimized, under constraints on its variance and on annual ROE's. Existence of a unique...

A popular argument states that most of the diversification in a portfolio can be obtained with a rather small number of securities. In this paper we present three algorithms to approach the underlying NP-hard problem of portfolio optimization with a cardinality constraint. All three of these...

We propose a novel portfolio selection approach that manages to ease some of the problems that characterise standard expected utility maximisation. The optimal portfolio is no longer defined as the extremum of a suitably chosen utility function: the latter, instead, is reinterpreted as the...

Using a data set that provides unprecedented details on the stockholders of Swedish listed companies, we analyze whether investors take into account corporate governance when they select stocks. We identify the companies where shareholders’ value is less likely to be maximized by using the...

In the 90s, Mexican firms issued more than ever American Depository Receipts (ADRs), i.e, certificates of Mexican stocks, traded in U.S. markets and managed by U.S. depositories. This paper is about testing the top Mexican firms’ ADR for ability to: a) replicate the ups and downs of U.S....

This book combines academic research and practical expertise on alternative assets and trading strategies in a unique way. The asset classes that are discussed include: credit risk, cross-asset derivatives, energy, private equity, freight agreements, alternative real assets (ARA), and socially...

While the literature on Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) is mainly focused on the stock market, little attention has been paid to SRI in sovereign bonds. This paper investigates the effect of taking into account socially responsible indicators for countries, the Vigeo Sustainability Ratings...