We extend the paper of Hinloopen and van Marrewijk (2005), who introduce the harmonic mass index to test whether two samples come from the same distribution, in the following directions. Firstly, we derive the Harmonic Weighted Mass (HWM) index for any number of samples. Secondly, this paper...

We measure the total-risk-adjusted (as opposed to factor-risk-adjusted) performance of hedge fund indices in well-diversified portfolios. Alpha is defined as the difference between, on the one hand, the average return on a mean-variance efficient portfolio containing exclusively traditional...

This paper presents and analyses the results of a survey of some 400 credit institutions in the European Union carried out by the European Investment Bank in the summer of 2003. An indepth analysis of the survey responses of 74 participating banks leads to the following conclusions: (1) despite...

By using an existing and a new convergence measure, this paper assesses whether bank loan and bond interest rates are converging for the non-financial corporate sector across the euro area. Whilst we find evidence for complete bond market integration, the market for bank loans remains segmented,...

We introduce Longitudinal Factor Analysis (LFA) to extract the Common Risk Free (CRF) rate from a sample of sovereign bonds of countries in a monetary union. Since LFA exploits the typically very large longitudinal dimension of bond data, it performs better than traditional factor analysis...

By using an existing and a new convergence measure, this paper assesses whether bank loan and bond interest rates are converging for the non-financial corporate sector across the euro area. Whilst we find evidence for complete bond market integration, the market for bank loans remains segmented,...