It is generally believed that excessive stock market volatility reflects non-mathematical market expectations that are driven by “irrational exuberance” or “animal spirits”. As shown in this paper, there is an alternative explanation. If ex-ante and ex-post expectations are calculated in...

Reliable estimates of variances and covariances are crucial for portfolio management and risk controlling. This paper investigates alternative methods to estimate time varying variance-covariance matrices: ordinary estimates and exponentially weighted moving averages in comparison to Markov...

This paper reexamines the Equity Premium Puzzle for the German stock market with control for inflation and taxation. Two methods for relaxing the assumption of aggregate consumption being equal to aggregate dividends are compared: the leverage approach and the usage of a bivariate stochastic...