Did the August 2011 European short sale bans on financial stocks accomplish their goals? In order to answer this question, we use stock options' implied volatility skews to proxy for investors' risk aversion. We find that on ban announcement day, risk aversion levels rose for all stocks but more...

We examine how the 2011 European short sale ban affected jump risk and contagion risk of both banned and unbanned stocks. Using Extreme Value Theory, we estimate the tails of stock options’ risk-neutral densities to calculate extreme downside risk. Using this measure and implied volatility...

This paper investigates how the announcement of negative information about a celebrity endorser impacts firm value, as measured by abnormal stock returns. The unique data sample consists of 93 celebrity disgraces that occurred between 1986 and 2011, affecting firms listed on US stock exchanges....

We use extreme value theory to analyse the tails of a momentum strategy’s return distribution. The asymmetry between the fat left tail and thin right tail strongly reduces a momentum strategy’s prospective utility levels.

Price risk is among the most substantial risk factors for farmers. Through a two-sector general equilibrium model, we describe how fat tails in agricultural prices may occur endogenously as a result of productivity shocks. Using thirty years of daily futures price data, we show that the returns...

In the literature on the empirical unconditional distribution of forein exchange rate returns there is indication that the type of distribution function is related to the form of the exchange rate regime. The analysis has been hampered by the nonnestedness of the alternative distribution models....

The discrete time analogue of the continuous time Krugman target zone model is developed in order to capture the typical volatility clusters and fat-tailed distributed innovations of exchange rates. It is shown that under these more general stochastic conditions the S-shaped relation between...

This paper compares foreign exchange market intervention in case there is no uncertainty about the extent of an imperfectly sustainable target zone and where there is uncertainty. A well-known example of the first case was the European Monetary System between 1979 and 1992. An example of the...