In this paper we introduce the dynamic semiparametric factor model (DSFM) for electricity forward curves. The biggest advantage of our approach is that it not only leads to smooth,seasonal forward curves extracted from exchange traded futures and forward electricity contracts, but also to a...

Einleitung: In der zweiten Hälfte der neunziger Jahre ist die Verbesserung der CorporateGovernance börsennotierter Gesellschaften zu einem intensiv diskutiertenThema geworden. Im Unterschied zu früheren Debatten, wie sie vor etwazwanzig Jahren anlässlich der Arbeit von Jensen/Meckling (1976)...

Recent empirical work shows that a better legal environment leads to lowerexpected rates of return in an international cross-section of countries. Thispaper investigates whether differences in firm-specific corporate governancealso help to explain expected returns in a cross-section of firms...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the German corporate governance ratingrecently developed by Drobetz, Schillhofer, and Zimmermann (2004). We find anon- linear relationship between ownership concentration and the quality of firmlevelcorporate governance as measured by the rating. Firms...

Recent empirical work shows that a better legal environment leads to lowerexpected rates of return in an international cross-section of countries. Thispaper investigates whether differences in firm-specific corporate governancealso help to explain expected returns in a cross-section of firms...

Die aktuelle Corporate Governance Literatur stützt die verbreitete Hypothe-se, dass sicht „gute“ Corporate Governance durch eine höhere Unterneh-mensbewertung manifestiert. Die Mehrzahl der empirischen Studien unter-sucht jedoch nur ausgewählte Corporate Governance Mechanismen...

Using a comprehensive set of listed Swiss companies, our findings suggestthat the size of the board of directors is an independent control mechanism.However, in contrast to previous studies, we do not find a significant rela-tionship between board size and firm performance. This suggests that...

We propose an affine term structure model which accommodates non-linearities in the drift and volatility function of the short-term interest rate. Such non-linearities are a consequence of discrete beta-distributed regime shifts constructed on multiple thresholds. We derive iterative closed form...

This paper constructs a model for the evolution of a risky security that is consistent with a set of observed call option prices. It explicitly treats the fact that only a discrete data set can be observed in practice. The framework is general and allows for state dependent volatility and jumps....