I study the history and performance of commercial real estate (CRE) in the pension fund portfolio, showing how many plan sponsors fundamentally changed their approach to CRE investment once underfunding gaps began to emerge in the early and middle 2000s. Several new empirical facts are...

What is the probability of high inflation; how high, when? These questions are important to all investors since even the 2% level to which we are accustomed will cut an investor's portfolio by over 17% during a decade. This 2% level is the target of the Federal Reserve, along with near 0%...

In contrast to Robert Mundell‘s Optimum Currency Area theory and his recommendation of forming monetary union, the economic fundamentals of Euro area member countries have not harmonized. The opposite holds: the Euro core countries – most of all Germany, but also the Netherlands and Finland...

Choosing a proper external risk measure is of great regulatory importance, as exemplified in the Basel II and Basel III Accord which use Value-at-Risk (VaR) with scenario analysis as the risk measures for setting capital requirements. We argue a good external risk measure should be robust with...

Non-maturing banking products are important asset and liability positions of banks. Their complexity inter alia arises from a non-trivial pass-through from market to product rates which makes the valuation and risk analysis challenging for both banks and banking supervisors. Based on a large...

Bilateral derivatives valuation is subject to counterparty credit risk (CCR) in that a counterparty could jump to default or its credit spread could vary over time. In the nomenclature of risk management, the former is called CCR exposure and the later leads to credit valuation adjustment (CVA)....

In its October 2013's consultative paper for a revised market risk framework (FRTB), and subsequent versions published thereafter, the Basel Committee suggests that non-securitization credit positions in the trading book be subject to a separate Default Risk Charge (DRC, formally Incremental...

Revised standards for capital requirements for market risks in a bank's trading book have been issued as a result of the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book. Under the new standards, default risk needs to be measured and capitalized through a dedicated Default Risk Charge (DRC). While...

This paper evaluates the model risk of models used for forecasting systemic and market risk. Model risk, which is the potential for different models to provide inconsistent outcomes, is shown to be increasing with market uncertainty. During calm periods, the underlying risk forecast models...

In line with regulations and common risk management practice, the credit risk of a portfolio is managed via its potential future exposures (PFEs), expected exposures (EEs), and related measures, the expected positive exposure (EPE), effective expected exposure (EEE), and the effective expected...