This paper explains and evaluates three proposals to create "safe assets" for the euro area based on sovereign bonds, in which sovereign risk is limited through diversification and some form of seniority. These assets would be held by banks and other financial institutions, replacing...

Shifts in equity turnover happen on and around holidays because rationally bounded investors become distracted. Their pattern reveals a persistent equity home bias even in the Eurozone, a stress test case for the survival of this bias given the high level of economic and financial development...

In this primer, we review the classical methods for assessing the performance of a financial portfolio. The analysis relies on benchmarking the return on the portfolio with that of a peer group. We define and discuss the pros and cons of four performance metrics that are theoretically consistent...

This paper reviews the main dimensions underlying the selection of a classical portfolio performance measure, namely the Sharpe Ratio, Jensen's alpha, the Modified Jensen's alpha, the Treynor Ratio, and the Information Ratio. We first examine how they differ from each other according to the risk...

The risk-return characteristics of art as an asset have previously been studied through aggregate price indexes. By contrast, we examine the long-run buy-and-hold performance of an actual portfolio, namely the collection of John Maynard Keynes. We find that its performance has substantially...

Stochastic processes is one of the key operations research tools for analysis of complex phenomenon. This paper has a unique application to the study of mean changing models in stock markets. The idea is to enter and exit stock markets like Apple Computer and the broad S&P500 index at good times...

Robert C. Merton is the School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the John and Natty McArthur University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. Merton received the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1997 for a new...

We analyze the relation between market-based credit risk interconnectedness among banks during the crisis and the associated balance sheet linkages via funding and securities holdings. For identification, we use a proprietary dataset that has the funding positions of banks at the bank-to-bank...

This paper examines the association between the default risk of foreign bank subsidiaries in developing countries and their parents during the global financial crisis, with the purpose of determining the size and sign of this correlation and, more importantly, understanding what factors can help...

The 27th SUERF Colloquium in Munich in June 2008: New Trends in Asset Management: Exploring the Implications was already topical in the Summer of 2008. The subsequent dramatic events in the Autumn of 2008 made the presentations in Munich even more relevant to investors and bankers that want to...