We argue that most current methodologies for value-at-risk (VaR) underestimate the VaR, and are therefore ill-suited for market risk capital. Better VaR methods are available, such as the tail-fitting method proposed here. However, financial institutions may be relctant to use those mehtods...

It is our view that the Basel Committee of Banking Supervision, in its Basel II proposals, has failed to address many of the key deficiencies of the global financial regulatory system and even created the potential for new sources of instability. This document highlights our concerns that the...

Complex interactions between fundamentals and liquidity during unstable periods in financial markets are succinctly modeled with coordination games. We propose a flexible framework to estimate such a model and use the efficient method of moments as estimation procedure. We illustrate the model...

This paper explores the potential for violations of VaR subadditivity both theoretically and by simulations, and finds that for most practical applications VaR is subadditive. Hence, there is no reason to choose a more complicated risk measure than VaR, solely for reasons of coherence.

Economic problems such as large claims analysis in insurance and value-at-risk in finance, require assessment of the probability P of extreme realizations Q. This paper provides a semi-parametric method for estimation of extreme (P,Q) combinations for data with heavy tails. We solve the long...

Many financial applications, such as risk analysis and derivatives pricing, depend on time scaling of risk.  A common method for this purpose, though only correct when returns are iid normal, is the square root of time rule where an estimated quantile of a return distribution is scaled to a...

Most of the existing empirical literature on FX market microstructure uses indicative quote data derived from Reuters EFX Screens. This paper examines the adequacy of such data as proxies for firm, tradeable quotes. We present a comparison of prices (and volumes) derived from Reuters D2000-2...

Jon Danielsson discusses the use of capital ratios and macroprudential regulation and describes the limitations of each policy: How banks can inflate capital ratios, how capital requirements fail to reduce the risk of aggregate shocks and how Basel III regulations burden smaller banks relative...