In this paper, we examine in which periods uncovered interest rate parity was likely to hold. Empirical research has shown mixed evidence on UIP. The main finding is that it doesn’t hold, although some researchers were not able to reject UIP in periods with large interest differentials or high...

Despite a vast literature on the capital structure of the firm there still is a big gap between theory and practice. Starting with the seminal work by Modigliani & Miller, much attention has been paid to the optimality of capital structure from the shareholders’ point of view. Over the last...

Electricity prices are known to be very volatile and subject to frequent jumps due to system breakdown, demand shocks, and inelastic supply. Appropriate pricing, portfolio, and risk management models should incorporate these spikes. We develop a framework to price European-style options that are...

This paper presents empirical evidence that security analysts do not efficiently use publicly available macroeconomic information in their earnings forecasts for emerging market stocks. Analysts completely ignore forecasts on political stability, while these provide valuable information for...

It is widely known that the small but looming possibility of default renders the expected return distribution for financial products containing credit risk to be highly skewed and fat tailed. In this paper we apply recent techniques developed for incorporating the additional risk faced by...

Hedge funds databases are typically subject to high attrition rates because of fund termination and self-selection. Even when all funds are included up to their last available return, one cannot prevent that ex post conditioning biases a.ect standard estimates of performance persistence. In this...

This paper analyzes the properties of multivariate tests of purchasing power parity (PPP) that fail to take heterogeneity in the speed of mean reversion across real exchange rates into account. We compare the performance of homogeneous and heterogeneous unit root testing methodologies. The...

This paper presents an essentially affine model of the term structure of interest rates making use of macroeconomic factors and their long-run expectations. The model extends the approach pioneered by Kozicki and Tinsley (2001) by modeling consistently long-run inflation expectations...

International financial markets are becoming integrated. Hence, global risk factor are increasingly important for portfolio selection and asset pricing. The recent empirical finance literature has confirmed that both the global market portfolio and exchange rate risk factors constitute important...