We propose to pool alternative systemic risk rankings for financial institutions using the method of principal components. The resulting overall ranking is less affected by estimation uncertainty and model risk. We apply our methodology to disentangle the common signal and the idiosyncratic...

We study the performance of alternative methods for calculating in-sample confidence and out of-sample forecast bands for time-varying parameters. The in-sample bands reflect parameter uncertainty only. The out-of-sample bands reflect both parameter uncertainty and innovation uncertainty. The...

This paper provides an empirical description of the relationshipbetween the trading system operated by a stockexchange and the transaction costs faced by heterogeneous investors who use the exchange. Therecent introduction ofSETS in the London Stock Exchange provides an excellent opportunity...

Contemporary financial stochastic programs typically involve a trade-offbetween return and (downside)-risk. Using stochastic programming we characterize analytically (rather than numerically) the optimal decisions that follow from characteristic single-stage and multi-stage versions of such...

We provide a new definition of breakdown in finite samples with an extension to asymptotic breakdown. Previous definitions center around defining a critical region for either the parameter or the objective function. If for a particular outlier constellation the critical region is entered,...

We advocate the use of absolute moment ratio statistics in conjunctionwith standard variance ratio statistics in order to disentangle lineardependence, non-linear dependence, and leptokurtosis in financial timeseries. Both statistics are computed for multiple return horizonssimultaneously, and...

In this paper we test for (Generalized) AutoRegressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity [(G)ARCH] in daily data on 22 exchange rates and 13 stock market indices using the standard Lagrange Multiplier [LM] test for GARCH and a LM test that is resistant to patches of additive outliers. The data span...

U.S. trading in non-U.S. stocks has grown dramatically. Round-the-clock, these stocks trade in the home market, in the U.S. marketand, potentially, in both markets simultaneously. We use a state space model to study 24-hour price discovery. As opposed to thestandard variance ratio'' approach,...

Various economic theories are available to explain the existence of credit and default cycles. There remains empirical ambiguity, however, as to whether or these cycles coincide. Recent papers_new suggest by their empirical research set-up that they do, or at least that defaults and credit...

Dynamic models for credit rating transitions are important ingredients for dynamic credit risk analyses. We compare the properties of two such models that have recently been put forward. The models mainly differ in their treatment of systematic risk, which can be modeled either using discrete...