This study's underlying premise is that current pension plan accounting has two important negative effects. First, it distorts the measurement of earnings and net worth in the short run, as well as the pattern of earnings over future periods. Second, this distortion can send incorrect signals to...

The proposal for banks to issue contingent capital that must convert into common equity when the banks' stock price falls below a specified threshold, or 'trigger,' does not in general lead to a unique equilibrium in equity and contingent capital prices. Multiple or no equilibrium arises because...

We analyse diverse multifactor pricing models in order to determine if they allow to explain the variability of the returns on the personal Pension Plans in Spain between 1995 and 2003, as well as to find their sources of risks. We test the following models: APT, the one suggested by Chen, Roll...

In this paper I assess the effect of interest rate risk and longevity risk on the solvency position of a life insurer selling policies with minimum guaranteed rate of return, profit participation and annuitization option at maturity. The life insurer is assumed to be based in Germany and...

This is the first study to show evidence of liquidity risk in private equity returns.Our data contains cash flows for 4,403 liquidated investments, which are both successfuland unsuccessful, reducing sample selection bias to a minimum. We find that a onestandarddeviation positive shock in...

I study the causal effect of bond investor demand on the financing and investment decisions of nonfinancial firms using granular data on the bond transactions of U.S. insurance companies. Liquidity inflows from insurance premiums combined with insurers' persistent investment preferences identify...

We study empirically how competition among high-frequency traders (HFTs) affects their trading behavior and market quality. Our analysis exploits a unique dataset, which allows us to compare environments with and without high-frequency competition, and contains an exogenous event - a tick size...

Traditionally, insurers are seen as stabilisers of financial markets that act countercyclically by buying assets whose price falls. Recent studies challenge this view by providing empirical evidence of procyclicality. This paper sheds new light on the underlying reasons for these opposing views....

Taking a firm's competitive position into account benefits investors who are better at evaluating this qualitative information. I find that fund managers who overweight companies with market power outperform their peers. Placebo exercises and an exogenous shock to product market competition...

This research analyses high-frequency data of the cryptocurrency market in regards to intraday trading patterns. We study trading quantitatives such as returns, traded volumes, volatility periodicity, and provide summary statistics of return correlations to CRIX (CRyptocurrency IndeX), as well...