Optimal portfolios of variance swaps are constructed taking account of both autocorrelation and cross asset dependencies. Market prices of variance swaps are extracted from option surface calibrations. The methods developed permit simulation of cash flows to arbitrary portfolios of variance...

Following the method of Pesaran, Shin and Smith (1999), this study extends the results of Sun, Lin and Nieh (2007) to investigate the risk diversification issue of individual corporate bonds in portfolios. This is one of the few studies on the decomposition of individual corporate yield spreads....

Following the reduced-form models of Duffee (1999) and Jarrow, Lando and Yu (2005), this study investigates the risk diversification issue of corporate bond portfolios. Considering especially long run market behavior, our empirical decomposition of corporate bond yield spreads indicates that the...

The choice of admissible trading strategies in mathematical modelling of financial markets is a delicate issue, going back to Harrison and Kreps (1979). In the context of optimal portfolio selection with expected utility preferences this question has been a focus of considerable attention over...

Monetary policy has pursued the concept of inflation targeting. This has been implemented in many countries. Here interest rates are supposed to respond to an inflation gap and output gap. Yet, recently monetary policy, in particular in the US after the subprime and the credit crises, the...

This paper develops an empirical procedure for analyzing the impact of model misspecification and calibration errors on measures of portfolio credit risk. When applied to large simulated portfolios with realistic characteristics, this procedure reveals that violations of key assumptions of the...

In recent research on asset allocation attention has been paid to time variations in the expected return on stocks. In particular, how does the long horizon variation in expected returns influence the inter-temporal hedging demand for stocks. Unfortunately, this problem for investors leads to a...

We propose a generalized Constant Proportion Portfolio Insurance (CPPI) strategy for the commodity futures fund which promises at least a partial principal guarantee at the end of the investment horizon. We present the generalized rebalancing rules to allocate capital between a risk-free asset...

This project explores capital markets risk exposure from water use in key industrial sectors in the Great Lakes region, represented by a subset of the region's largest companies and water users. The largest industrial water users in the Great Lakes region include (in decreasing order):...