This article applies quantile regression to assess the factors that influence the risk of incurring high trading costs. Using data on the equity trades of the world's second largest pension fund in the first quarter of 2002, we show that trade timing, momentum, volatility and the type of broker...

International commercial banks, institutional investors, and private investors have become increasingly interested in financing microfinance institutions (MFIs). This paper investigates whether adding microfinance funds to a portfolio of risky international assets yields diversification gains....

Often, a relatively small group of trades causes the major part of the trading costs on an investment portfolio. Consequently, reducing the trading costs of comparatively few expensive trades would already result in substantial savings on total trading costs. Since trading costs depend to some...

type="main" xml:lang="en" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>This article proposes a new method for estimating claim liabilities. Our approach is based on the observation from contract theory that there is information asymmetry between the insurer and the policyholder about the risks incurred by the latter. We show that...</p>

This paper emphasizes the importance of quantitative comparative research in the social sciences. For that purpose a great variety of modem classification methods is available. The paper aims to give a selective overview of major classes of these methods and highlights the advantages and...

This paper is the first to analyze the price effects of equity trading by a pension fund. We find that, on average, these effects are non­negligible: 20 basis points for buys and 26 basis points for sells. Fur­thermore, we show that (relative) trade size and market capitalization, commonly...

This paper quantifies the diversification potential of timberland investments in a mean-variance framework. The starting point is a broad set of benchmark assets represented by various indexes. Including publicly traded timberland investments in the portfolio does not significantly increase...