Do country-specific equity market characteristics explain variations in foreign equity portfolio allocation? We study this question using comprehensive foreign equity portfolio holdings data and different measures of country-specific equity market factors for 36 host countries. Employing panel...

We document a little-known source of information exploited by sophisticated institutional investors: the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a law that allows for the disclosure of previously unreleased information by the U.S. Government. Through FOIA requests, we identify several sophisticated...

I explore cross-sectional portfolio performance in a sample containing 324,736 transactions conducted by 16,831 investors at an Internet discount brokerage firm during the period May 1999 to March 2002. On average, investors hold undiversified portfolios, show a strong preference for risk, and...

Walker (1993a, 1993b) conclude that there is a systematic relationship between returns and the size of Chilean Pension Funds. This association is ussually motivated by institutional and regulatory aspects. This paper introduces a theoretical model to moti

Using monthly data for the period 1953-2003, we apply a real-time modeling approach to investigate the implications of U.S. political stock market anomalies for forecasting excess stock returns. Our empirical findings show that political variables, selected on the basis of widely used model...

Instruments for credit risk transfer arise endogenously from and interact with optimizing behavior of their users. This is particularly true with credit derivatives which are usually OTC contracts between banks as buyers and sellers of credit risk. Recent literature, however, does not account...

This paper investigates a sample of 27 OECD countries to test whether national elections induce higher stock market volatility. It is found that the countryspecific component of index return variance can easily double during the week around an Election Day, which shows that investors are...

Prior research documented that U.S. stock prices tend to grow faster during Democratic administrations than during Republican administrations. This letter examines whether stock returns in other countries also depend on the political orientation of the incumbents. An analysis of 24 stock markets...

Ende der 90er Jahre schien eine intensive Auswahl der Investments kaum notwendig, da fast jede Aktienanlage deutliche Kursgewinne versprach. Nach dem jähen Absturz an den Börsen haben die Anleger einen beträchtlichen Teil ihres Aktienvermögens verloren. Damit rücken wieder verstärkt...