Starting from the Merton framework for firm defaults, we provide the analytics and robustness of the relationship between default correlations. We show that loans with higher default probabilities will not only have higher variances but also higher correlations between loans. As a consequence,...

Overconfidence is one of the most important biases in financial markets and commonly associated with excessive trading and asset market bubbles. So far, most of the finance literature takes overconfidence as a given, "static" personality trait. In this paper we introduce a novel experimental...

In this paper we review the models of joint defaults of the current major industry-sponsored credit risk frameworks. Recognizing the need for further improvements of these models, we address the following issues. First, we identify the most important modeling drawbacks that could be fixed on a...

Starting from the Merton framework for firm defaults we provide the analytics and robustness of the relationship between default probabilities and default correlations. We then derive the implication of these results for the impact of macroeconomic shocks on credit portfolios, for the pricing of...

We consider a multi-portfolio optimization problem where nonlinear market impact costs result in a strong dependency of one account's performance on the trading activities of other accounts. We develop a novel target-oriented model that jointly optimizes the rebalancing trades and split of...

Many funds have “ESG” in their names, suggesting they hold a portfolio of stocks or other assets issued by firms that rank highly on ESG criteria. However, names may be misleading and actual portfolio holdings often do not reflect ESG investing criteria so that the investor in such funds...

We introduce a novel empirical decomposition of equity price growth rates in terms of equity holdings, based on market-clearing conditions. Although our sample holdings cover only an average of 5% of market capitalization, our reconstructed equity holdings account for, on average, 89% of the...

We quantify the housing-consumption channel in mortgage demand according to which households borrow more following house-price increases since housing and non-housing consumption are imperfect substitutes. To identify this channel, we take a structural approach to mortgage demand and supply,...

We combine a customized survey and randomized controlled trial (RCT) to study the effect of higher-order beliefs on U.S. retail investors' portfolio allocations. We find that investors' higher-order beliefs about stock market returns are correlated with but distinct from their first-order...