We test the role of funding-constrained investors across developed financial markets. We compile direct measures of the severity of funding frictions, or illiquidity, from deviations of government bond yields from a fitted yield curve. Using these illiquidity measures, we first show that higher...

Private equity fund managers, pension fund managers, and investment advisers assert that private equity investments diversify investors' portfolios. We show that cost-based methods of accounting understate the systematic risk of private equity, creating an illusion of diversification. After...

Hedge Funds are often considered as a possibility for optimizing traditional portfolios due to their alternative risk factors and sources of return. But as the return distribution of hedge funds shows negative skewness and excess kurtosis, using portfolio optimization techniques, based on the...

In the 90s, Mexican firms issued more than ever American Depository Receipts (ADRs), i.e, certificates of Mexican stocks, traded in U.S. markets and managed by U.S. depositories. This paper is about testing the top Mexican firms’ ADR for ability to: a) replicate the ups and downs of U.S....

This paper studies the dependence structure on Central European, German and UK stock markets within the framework of a semiparametric copula model for weekly stock index return pairs. Although the linear correlation is much lower, we find similar degree of lower tail dependence as between...

This paper provides a broad empirical examination of the major currencies' roles in international capital markets, with a special emphasis on the first year of the Euro. A contribution is made as to how to measure these roles, both for international financing as well as for international...

The driving force behind the well-documented medium term momentum effect in stock returns is subject of much debate. Empirical papers that aim to find the determinants of this return continuation, seem to be almost exclusively restricted to US stock markets. Consequently, regional effects have...

We evaluate alternative multivariate models of dynamic correlations in terms of realized out-of-sample Sharpe ratios for an active portfolio manager who rebalances a portfolio of international equities on a daily basis. The evaluation period covers the recent financial crisis which was marked by...

This paper investigates the diversification prospects which may be reaped when investing in a mixture of emerging and developed market assets. Given that emerging markets are somewhat distinct from developed ones, one may expect significant diversification potential and therefore risk reduction....