In the basic Markowitz and Merton models, a stock's weight in efficient portfolios goes up if its expected rate of return goes up. Put differently, there are no financial Giffen goods. By an example from mortgage choice we illustrate that for more complicated portfolio problems Giffen effects do...

In this paper the performance of locally risk-minimizing hedge strategies for European options in stochastic volatility models is studied from an experimental as well as from an empirical perspective. These hedge strategies are derived for a large class of diffusion-type stochastic volatility...

We address some key issues related to risk and capital allocation in insurance companies. We argue that the Froot-Stein approach to risk is relevant to a number of important problems in the daily management of an insurance portfolio and that - taken to its consequence - this approach will lead...

We extend the short rate model of Vasicek (1977) to include jumps in the local mean. Conditions ensuring existence of a unique equivalent martingale measure are given, implying that the model is arbitrage-free and complete. We develop efficient numerical methods for computation of zero coupon...

Between September 6, 2011, and January 15, 2015, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) enforced a lower bound of 1.20 on the CHF/EUR exchange rate. In this paper, we view the SNB's commitment to this lower bound as a put option and use a latent likelihood estimation approach to infer (a) where the...

Since its announcement made on Sept. 6, 2011, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has been pursuing the goal of a minimum EUR/CHF exchange rate of 1.20, promising to intervene on currency markets to prevent the exchange rate from falling below this level. We use a compound option pricing approach to...

For most events, risk-neutral outcome probabilities are identical across numeraire currencies. Some events, however, such as elections or referendums, may have an impact on exchange rates. This implies numeraire dependence in risk-neutral outcome probabilities, which leads to different state...

Betting quotes provide valuable information on market-implied probabilities for outcomes of events like elections or referendums, which may have an impact on exchange rates. We generate exchange rate forecasts around such events based on a model that combines risk-neutral event probabilities...