This paper explores the relationship between self-declared risk aversion of private investors and their willingness to hold diversified portfolios of financial assets. The analysis is based on household survey data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP) that provides a reliable measure of...

Strategic asset allocation purposes and particularly the evaluation of new asset classes require a forward-looking approach. Philipp M. Becker investigates the attractiveness of microfinance investments for different investor categories. To integrate microfinance into an asset allocation...

This paper considers the risk management problem of an investor who holds a diversified portfolio of global equities or bonds and chooses long or short positions in currencies to manage the risk of the total portfolio. Over the period 1975-2005, we find that a risk-minimizing global equity...