This article reviews the principal features of structured finance instruments. Key to understanding the risk properties of these products is the evaluation of the risks associated with their contractual structure, in addition to the modelling of the credit risk of the underlying asset pools. It...

This paper studies the effects of borrowers' balance sheet heterogeneity on economywide risks and fragility, together with effects from intermediary balance sheet channel. We build a continuous time heterogeneous agents model with financial frictions and analytically characterize the transition...

Historical VaR, CVaR and ES (Expected Shortfall) to LIQUIDATION Software is a model characterized by its straightforwardness, allowing regulators measure risk using a standard database of primitive factors and portfolio positions only, leaving little error margin in comparing market risk for...

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...

This paper studies how fund managers take skewed bets in tournaments in the investment management industry, assuming that a given fund manager constantly reexamines fund performance relative to her peers and takes a position with respect to skewness risk. I show that when a fund manager...

In an overlapping generations economy with (incomplete) financial markets but no intermediaries, there is underinvestment in safe assets. In an economy with intermediaries and no financial markets, accumulating reserves of safe assets allows returns to be smoothed, nondiversifiable risk to be...

Income smoothing is defined as the deliberate normalization of income in order to reach a desired trend. If the smoothing causes more information to be reflected in the stock price, it is likely to improve the allocation of resources and can be a critical factor in investment decisions. This...

This paper studies the role of investors' optimism about future economic growth in their investment decisions. Based on simple intuition, we argue that investors base their future investment decisions not only on asset-specific information, but also on their expectations about future economic...