In this paper, we introduce a completely new and unique historical dataset of Belgian stock returns during the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. This high-quality database comprises stock price and company related information on more than 1500 companies. Given the extensive...

The original Panjer recursion of the CreditRisk+ model is said to be unstable and therefore to yield inaccurate results of the tail distribution of credit portfolios. A much-hailed solution for the flaws of the Panjer recursion is the saddlepoint approximation method. In this paper we show that...

The continuing creation of portfolio insurance applications as well as the mixed research evidence suggests that so far no consensus has been reached about the effectiveness of portfolio insurance. Therefore, this paper provides a performance evaluation of the stop-loss, synthetic put and...

In this paper, we elaborate a formula for determining the optimal strike price for a bond put option, used to hedge a position in a bond. This strike price is optimal in the sense that it minimizes, for a given budget, either Value-at-Risk or Tail Value-at-Risk. Formulas are derived for both...

This study analyzes the economic importance of portfolio advice. Academic studies mainly focus on the performance of domestic equity portfolios of mutual or pension funds and attempt to measure abnormal performance following a return-based regression approach. Remarkably little is known...

It is commonly agreed that the term spread and stock returns are useful in predicting recessions. We investigate whether interest rate

It is commonly agreed that the term spread and stock returns are useful in predicting recessions. We extend these empirical findings by examining interest rate and stock market volatility as additional recession indicators. Both risk-return analysis and the theory of investment under uncertainty...

This paper decomposes the explained part of the CDS spread changes of 31 listed euro area banks according to various risk drivers. The choice of the credit risk drivers is inspired by the Merton (1974) model. Individual CDS liquidity and other market and business variables are identified to...

It is commonly agreed that the term spread and stock returns are useful in predicting recessions.We extend these empirical findings by examining interest rate and stock market volatility as additional recession indicators.Both risk-return analysis and the theory of investment under uncertainty...