Credit risk has been a worrying type of risk for financial managers. Fortunately, a recent market development –credit derivatives- has made the credit risk more manageable. The loan portfolio management has become more practicable than it used to be in the past. However, credit derivatives are...

Quantitative finance combines mathematical finance, financial statistics, financial econometrics and empirical finance to provide a solid quantitative foundation for the analysis of financial issues. The purpose of this special issue on “Recent developments in quantitative finance” is to...

This introduces the symposium on financial economics.

Contingent Convertibles (“CoCos”) are contingent capital instruments which convert into shares, or have a principal write down, if a trigger event takes place. CoCos exhibit the undesirable so-called death-spiral effect: by actively hedging the equity risk, investors can (unintentionally)...

This paper proposes a methodology to analyse the risk and return of large loan portfolios in a joint setting. I propose a tractable model to obtain the distribution of loan returns from observed interest rates and default frequencies. I follow a sectoral approach that captures the heterogeneous...

Les actifs financiers sûrs sont au cœur de la finance de marché aujourd'hui. L'aptitude de tels actifs à protéger la valeur de l'épargne et des avoirs financiers, à servir de garantie à des prêteurs, à permettre aux entités souveraines de se financer ou encore aux banques centrales de...

This paper quantitatively accounts for the cyclical dynamics of key macroeconomic housing and mortgage market variables using a tractable, search-theoretic model of housing with equilibrium mortgage default. To explain these dynamics, the model highlights the importance of liquidity spirals...

This paper investigates the macroeconomic effects of search risk in the housing market. To do so, I introduce a tractable directed search model of housing with mul- tidimensional buyer and seller heterogeneity. I incorporate this framework in an in- complete markets macroeconomic model with...

Using novel data on investors' bond portfolios, we study the contagion of the crisis from securitized bonds to corporate bonds. When securitized bonds became “toxic” in August 2007, mutual funds retained the now illiquid securitized bonds and sold corporate bonds. Funds with negative flows...

We argue that there is a connection between the interbank market for liquidity and the broader financial markets, which has its basis in demand for liquidity by banks. Tightness in the market for liquidity leads banks to engage in what we term “liquidity pull-back,” which involves selling...