This paper analyzes if Bitcoin enhances investment portfolios both financially and in terms of lower carbon emissions. We show that the addition of Bitcoin to a diversified equity portfolio does improve the risk-return relationship of the portfolio but not its sustainability by reducing the...

Insider trading laws are designed to ensure a level-playing field and trust in financial markets at the expense of less efficient markets. This paper argues that insider trading laws fail to ensure a level-playing field and instead facilitate fraud and undermine trust and fairness. We use a...

There is a well documented asymmetric return - volatility effect of equity returns, that is, negative shocks increase volatility by more than positive shocks. This paper analyzes the return - volatility relationship of commodity price changes and finds an inverted asymmetric effect with a...

This paper proposes a new approach to identify safe haven assets and to characterize their relationship with the market. We use quantile regression to analyze the returns of potential safe haven assets conditional on all market conditions including periods of financial turmoil. We find a...

This paper analyzes the demand for jewelry, bars & coins, and gold ETFs across high-income and middle-income countries. We employ a simultaneous equations model that allows a joint determination of the various categories of gold demand and find significant differences across gold demand...

Gold traditionally has been used as a store of value and an inflation hedge. More recently, gold is also viewed as a hedge against uncertainty and a safe haven. This paper demonstrates that most of the properties regularly associated with gold are only valid within a simple regression framework...

The global financial crisis of 2008 was a crisis affecting both the financial sector and the “real economy.” This paper analyzes the transmission of unexpected shocks from the financial sector in the US to other countries and sectors. We test the hypothesis that the financial crisis spread...

This paper analyzes the incidences of sector-specific contagion during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009. The empirical analysis comprising ten sectors in 25 major developed and emerging stock markets shows that the crisis led to an increased co-movement of returns and thus contagion...

Gold has been a store of value for centuries and a safe haven for investors in the past decades. However, the increased investment in gold for speculative or hedging purposes has changed the safe haven property. We demonstrate theoretically and empirically that investor behavior has the...