We analyse the performance of simple investment strategies in IPOs based on a large sample of IPOs in Germany between 1985 and 2002. In particular, we compare the performance of the following strategies: Invest equally weighted in each IPO, invest market value weighted in each IPO, invest in an...

Liquidity, the ease of trading an asset, strongly varies between different sizes of stock positions. We analyze this aspect using the Xetra Liquidity Measure (XLM), which calculates daily, weighted spread for impatient traders transacting against the limit order book. For this measure, we have...

Heterosedasticity in returns may be explainable by trading volume. We use different volume variables, including surprise volume - i.e. unexpected above-avergae trading activity - which is derived from uncorrelated volume innovations. Assuming eakly exogenous volume, we extend the Lamoureux and...

Financial markets witness high levels of activity at certain times, but remain calm at others. This makes the flow of physical time discontinuous. Therefore using physical time scales for studying financial time series, runs the risk of missing important activities. An alternative approach is...

The current crisis and discussions, in the euro area in particular, show that sovereign debt crises/defaults are no longer restricted to developing economies. After crises in many Latin American countries, the literature on quantitative dynamic macro-models of sovereign default has been...

We analyze the dynamics of liquidity in Xetra, an electronic open limit order book. We use the Exchange Liquidity Measure (XLM), a measure of the cost of a roundtrip trade of given size V. This measure captures the price and the quantity dimension of liquidity. We present descriptive statistics,...

This paper studies the dynamics of stock market volatility and retail investor attention measured by internet search queries. We find a strong co-movement of stock market indices' realized volatility and the search queries for their names. Furthermore, Granger causality is bi-directional: high...

This paper studies the dynamics of stock market volatility and retail investor attention measured by internet search queries. We find a strong co-movement of stock market indices' realized volatility and the search queries for their names. Furthermore, Granger causality is bi-directional: high...

Catastrophe bonds (cat bonds) often use index triggers, such as, for instance, parametric descriptions of a catastrophe. This implies the problem of the so-called basis risk, resulting from the fact that, in contrast to traditional reinsurance, this kind of coverage cannot be a perfect hedge for...

We find that investor sentiment should affect a firm's employment policy in a world with moral hazard and noise traders. Consistent with the model's predictions, we show that higher sentiment among US investors leads to: (1) higher employment growth worldwide; (2) lower labor productivity, as the...