Taking the mean-variance portfolio model as a benchmark, we compute the optimally diversified portfolio for banks located in France, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S. under different assumptions about currency hedging. We compare these optimal portfolios to the actual cross-border assets of banks...

Information costs and regulatory barriers are the main distinguishing features of international financial markets as compared to national financial markets. This paper presents a simple model of the impact of these factors on banks' cross-border activities and provides empirical evidence. Our...

If the technological revolution which has taken place over the past decades has lowered information costs and if information costs increase in distance, distance should – ceteris paribus – become less important in determining international bank lending. We are using a dataset on assets and...

We study return predictability of stock indexes of blue chip firms and smaller hightechnology firms in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom during the second half of the 1990s. We measure return predictability in terms of first-order autocorrelation coefficients, and find evidence for return...

We study the link between underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) and index excess returns in secondary markets. We use a theoretical model to argue that underpricing of IPOs raises investors' attention and, thereby, triggers investments in secondary markets. Our theoretical model...

We used a recursive modeling approach to study whether investors could, in real time, have used information on the comovement of stock markets to forecast stock returns in European stock markets for high-technology firms. We used weekly data on returns in the Neuer Markt, the Nouveau Marché,...

This paper offers a quantitative description of European private equity markets and compares the recent development in these markets with the development of the US venture capital market. Moreover, the paper addresses the differences between private equity investors acting in a single national...

This study reports results from an empirical investigation of business services sector firms that (start to) export, comparing exporters to firms that serve the national market only. We estimate identically specified empirical models using comparable enterprise level data from France, Germany,...

This study reports results from an empirical investigation of business services sector firms that (start to) export, comparing exporters to firms that serve the national market only. We estimate identically specified empirical models using comparable enterprise level data from France, Germany,...

Information costs and regulatory barriers are the main distinguishing features of international financial markets as compared to national financial markets. This paper presents a simple model of the impact of these factors on banks' cross-border activities and provides empirical evidence. Our...