Empirical evidence shows that observed macroeconomic fundamentals have little explanatory power for nominal exchange rates (the exchange rate determination puzzle). On the other hand, the recent microstructure approach to exchange rates has shown that most exchange rate volatility at short to...

We extend the Lucas asset pricing tree economy to a heterogeneous population. Perturbative methods are applied to explicitly calculate the second order response of returns to heterogeneity. We determine the status of various stylized facts. For example, we find that the equity premium always...

Risk managers use portfolios to diversify away the un-priced risk of individual securities. In this paper, we compare the benefits of portfolio diversification for downside risk in case returns are normally distributed with the case fat tailed distributed returns. The downside risk of a security...

We examine the dynamics of extreme values of overnight borrowing rates in an inter-bank money market before a financial crisis during which overnight borrowing rates rocketed up to (simple annual) 4000 percent. It is shown that the generalized Pareto distribution fits well to the extreme values...

Standard models in economics stress the role of intelligent agents who maximize utility. However, there may be situations where, for some purposes, constraints imposed by market institutions dominate intelligent agent behavior. We use data from the London Stock Exchange to test a simple model in...

The threat of deflation combined with the zero lower bound on interest rates has recently been intensely debated in economics. The consequences of a deflationary recession are manifold and severe as the Japanese example demonstrates. In this paper, we focus on the potential connections between...

The optimal bond-stock mix is examined in light of an apparent inconsistency between the Tobin Separation Theorem and the advice of popular investment advisors which has been pointed out by Canner et al. (1997). It is shown that the apparent inconsistency is largely explicable in terms of the...

Recent high correlations among hedge fund returns could suggest concentrations of risk comparable to those preceding the hedge fund crisis of 1998. A comparison of the current rise in correlations with the elevation before the 1998 event, however, reveals a key difference. The current increase...

This paper shows that the delta hedging performance of the Black-Scholes model can be substantially improved with a rather simple adjustment of the Black-Scholes delta. By utilizing the volatility smile, the Black-Scholes delta can be adjusted to account for the inverse movements between...

This paper investigates nonlinear pricing kernels in which the risk factor is endogenously determined and preferences restrict the definition of the pricing kernel. These kernels potentially generate the empirical performance of nonlinear and multi-factor models, while maintaining empirical...