Recent studies show that loss probability (LP) is a decisive factor when people evaluate risk of assets in laboratory experiments, suggesting a positive relationship between LP and expected stock returns. This corresponds to the classical "Safety-First" principle. We find empirical support for...

Stock market participation differs a lot across countries. Cultural dimensions could be a potential factor for that. We show that indeed uncertainty avoidance is linked to rates of stock market participation across countries. We can show even more that uncertainty avoidance has an indirect...

Based on the APARCH model and two outlier detection methods, we compute reliable time series of volatility asymmetry for 49 countries with relatively few observations. Results show a steady increase in the asymmetry over the years for most countries. We find that economic development and market...

We prove that under very weak conditions optimal financial products have to be co-monotone with the inverted state price density. Optimality is meant in the sense of the maximization of an arbitrary preference model, e.g. Expected Utility Theory or Prospect Theory. The proof is based on methods...

Financial economics is a fascinating topic where ideas from economics, mathematics and, most recently, psychology are combined to understand financial markets. This book gives a concise introduction into this field and includes for the first time recent results from behavioral finance that help...

Foundations -- Decision Theory -- Financial Markets -- Two-Period Model: Mean-Variance Approach -- Two-Period Model: State-Preference Approach -- Multiple-Periods Model -- Advanced Topics -- Theory of the Firm -- Information Asymmetries on Financial Markets -- Time-Continuous Model