Institutional investors usually employ mean-variance analysis to determine optimal portfolio weights. Almost immediately upon implementation, however, the portfolio's weights become sub-optimal as changes in asset prices cause the portfolio to drift away from the optimal targets. In an idealized...

The relative benefits of country diversification and industry diversification are critical for investors, portfolio managers, and investment banks. The unification of Europe has had a substantial impact on these relative benefits and the ultimate goal of this article is to evaluate their...

Institutional investors usually employ mean-variance analysis to determine optimal portfolio weights. Almost immediately upon implementation, however, the portfolio's weights become sub-optimal as changes in asset prices cause the portfolio to drift away from the optimal targets. We apply a...

The U. S. government's failure to provide adequate oversight and prudent regulation of the financial markets, together with excessive risk taking by some financial institutions, pushed the world financial system to the brink of systemic failure in 2008. As a consequence of this near catastrophe,...

Regime shifts present significant challenges for investors because they cause performance to depart significantly from the ranges implied by long-term averages of means and covariances. But regime shifts also present opportunities for gain. The authors show how to apply Markov-switching models...

Regime shifts present significant challenges for investors because they cause performance to depart significantly from the ranges implied by long-term averages of means and covariances. But regime shifts also present opportunities for gain. The authors show how to apply Markov-switching models...

Hedge funds have return peculiarities not commonly associated with traditional investment vehicles. Specifically, hedge funds seem more inclined to produce return distributions with significantly non-normal skewness and kurtosis. There is also growing acceptance of the notion that investor...

Should investors in emerging markets focus on diversifying across countries or diversifying across industries? This question, widely debated in developed markets, and particularly in Europe, has received little attention in emerging markets. Using a normative approach that disentangles the...