Scaling behavior measured in cross-sectional studies through the tail index of a power law is prone to a bias. This hampers inference; in particular, time variation in estimated tail indices may be erroneous. In the case of a linear factor model, the factor biases the tail indices in the left and...

The selection of upper order statistics in tail estimation is notoriously difficult. Methods that are based on asymptotic arguments, like minimizing the asymptotic MSE, do not perform well in finite samples. Here, we advance a data-driven method that minimizes the maximum distance between the...

Actual portfolios contain fewer stocks than are implied by standard financial analysis that balances the costs of diversification against the benefits in terms of the standard deviation of the returns. Suppose a safety first investor cares about downside risk and recognizes the heavy tail...

The dynamic properties of micro based stochastic macro models are often analyzed through a linearization around the associated deterministic steady state. Recent literature has investigated the error made by such a deterministic approximation. Complementary to this literature we investigate how...

Standard risk metrics tend to underestimate the true risks of hedge funds because of serial correlation in the reported returns. Getmansky et al. (2004) derive mean, variance, Sharpe ratio, and beta formulae adjusted for serial correlation. Following their lead, adjusted downside and global...

We use futures instead of forward rates to study the complete maturity spectrum of the forward premium puzzle from two days to six months. At short maturities the slope coefficient is positive, but these turn negative as the maturity increases to the monthly level. Futures data allow us to...

We analyze the cross-sectional differences in the tail risk of equity returns and identify the drivers of tail risk. We provide two statistical procedures to test the hypothesis of cross-sectional downside tail shape homogeneity. An empirical study of 230 US non-financial firms shows that...

This paper investigates how the downside tail risk of stock returns is differentiated cross-sectionally. Stock returns follow heavy-tailed distributions with downside tail risk determined by the tail shape and scale. If safety-first investors are concerned with sufficiently large downside...

Standard risk metrics tend to underestimate the true risks of hedge funds because of serial correlation in the reported returns. Getmansky, Lo, and Makarov (2004) derive mean, variance, Sharpe ratio, and beta formulae adjusted for serial correlation. Following their lead, we derive adjusted...

Price risk is among the most substantial risk factors for farmers. Through a two-sector general equilibrium model, we describe how fat tails in agricultural prices may occur endogenously as a result of productivity shocks. Using thirty years of daily futures price data, we show that the returns...