We develop a simple binomial model of liquidity and credit risk in which a bondholder has the option to time the sale of his security, given a distribution of potential buyers, bids and liquidity shocks. We examine first the case without default and find that our model predicts decreasing term...

The objective of this paper is to model and estimate simultaneously the joint dynamics of default-free and defaultable bond term structures. Defaultable bond prices are modeled in an intensity based framework along the lines of Duffie and Singleton (1999) with state variables following an affine...

In this paper we entertain the hypothesis that observed variations in income shares are the result of changes in the balance of power between workers and capital owners in labor relations. We show that this view implies that income share variations represent a risk factor of ¯rst-order...

In the standard real options approach to investment under uncertainty, agents formulate optimal policies under the assumptions of risk neutrality or perfect capital markets. However in most situations, corporate executives face incomplete markets either because they receive compensation packages...

This paper presents an overview of the theories underlying the major portfolio performance measurement models, with an empirical application to assess the market timing and stock-picking abilities of an exhaustive sample of 60 Swiss-equity investment funds over the 1977-1999 period. Regardless...

Certain types of industries benefit from a large flexibility in the choice of the location of their activities. This is particularly the case for banks. In this paper we show that a bank which has the possibility to locate its activities in two countries rather than in one can increase its...

Investment banks find it profitable to invest in the development of innovative derivative securities even without being able to preclude early competition from other investment banks using patents. To explain this, we assume that the developer can learn from the first issues of the innovative...

This paper studies the corporate policy distortions caused by realization-based capital gains taxation at the personal level in a dynamic trade-off theory model. The Lock-in effect of embedded capital gains creates severe conflicts of interest between incumbent and new investors. The firm's...

This paper examines the determinants of stock returns in a small open economy using an APT framework. The analysis is conducted for the Swiss stock market which has the particularity of including a large proportion of firms that are exposed to foreign economic conditions. Both a statistical and...

Constraints on downside risk, measured by shortfall probability, expected shortfall, semi-variance etc., lead to optimal asset allocations which differ from the meanvariance optimum. The resulting optimization problem can become quite complex as it exhibits multiple local extrema and...