The asset allocation is a practical problem for most institutional and private investors, who routinely deal with a wide variety of stocks, bonds and options. Evidence suggests that both the expected return and the volatility vary over time. Many studies find that the expected returns have...

This interdisciplinary paper explains how mathematical techniques of stochastic optimal control can be applied to the recent subprime mortgage crisis. Why did the financial markets fail to anticipate the recent debt crisis, despite the large literature in mathematical finance concerning optimal...

We examine a production-based asset pricing model with regime-switching productivity growth, learning and ambiguity. Both mean and volatility of the growth rate of productivity are assumed to follow a Markov chain with an unobservable state. The agent's preferences are characterized by the...

This paper studies the effect of new fund flows on investment behavior and the resulting equilibrium price of risk. The Small Fund Industry model shows equilibria with overinvestment in unprofitable and underinvestment in profitable investment opportunities. The Large Fund Industry model derives...

We examine whether simple VARs can produce empirical portfolio rules similar to those obtained under a range of multivariate Markov switching models, by studying the effects of expanding both the order of the VAR and the number/selection of predictor variables included. In a typical stock-bond...

Investing in financial securities inevitably involves risks on the one hand and opportunities on the other hand. This thesis bundles four different studies on risks and/or opportunities in financial markets. In one study, we examine the cross-sectional explanatory power of different...

Depending tactical asset allocation upon the forecasting model choice, it is often discussed the existence of a time diversification opportunity. We focus the analysis on MSCI and JPMorgan benchmarks for equity and fixed income market in Italy, Switzerland, UK, Europe, USA, Japan, and Far East....