In this paper we adopt a principal components analysis (PCA) to reduce the dimensionality of the term structure and employ autoregressive models (AR) to forecast principal components which, in turn, are used to forecast swap rates. Arguing in favor of structural variation, we propose data...

The paper proposes a data driven adaptive model selection strategy. The selection crite- rion measures economic exante forecasting content by means of trading implied cash flows. Empirical evidence suggests that the proposed strategy is neither exposed to selection bias nor to the risk of...

Weather influences our daily lives and choices and has an enormous impact on cooperate revenues and earnings. Weather derivatives differ from most derivatives in that the underlying weather cannot be traded and their market is relatively illiquid. The weather derivative market is therefore...

Weather derivatives (WD) are different from most financial derivatives because the underlying weather cannot be traded and therefore cannot be replicated by other financial instruments. The market price of risk (MPR) is an important parameter of the associated equivalent martingale measures used...

This paper proposes a profit model for spread trading by focusing on the stochastic movement of the price spread and its first hitting time probability density. The model is general in that it can be used for any financial instrument. The advantage of the model is that the profit from the trades...

The traditional avoidance literature undeservedly neglects tax base distribution as a factor affecting the avoidance price, and generally assumed to be equal to the avoidance cost. In reality, avoidance providers are usually either high-skilled specialists or insiders. The strong collusion thus,...

Forecasting based pricing of Weather Derivatives (WDs) is a new approach in valuation of contingent claims on nontradable underlyings. Standard techniques are based on historical weather data. Forward-looking information such as meteorological forecasts or the implied market price of risk (MPR)...

On the temperature derivative market, modeling temperature volatility is an important issue for pricing and hedging. In order to apply pricing tools of financial mathematics, one needs to isolate a Gaussian risk factor. A conventional model for temperature dynamics is a stochastic model with...

This study questions whether the Feri Trust Rating, the Euro Fondsnote and the Finanztest-Bewertung are able to predict the future performance of German equity mutual funds. These three fund valuations are used to check whether ratings have a higher predictability than rankings using historical...

Merchant fees and reward programs generate an implicit monetary transfer to credit card users from non-card (or "cash") users because merchants generally do not set differential prices for card users to recoup the costs of fees and rewards. On average, each cash-using household pays $149 to...