The housing recession has multiple flow-through effects, among them a potential for negatively impacting the financial condition of some municipalities, and therefore parts of the municipal bond market. We explore linkages between housing and municipal bond markets at the county level using a...

In this paper, the relationship between house prices and rents across eight major metropolitan areas in the U.S. is examined, and a rent price index to provide the framework of our analysis is developed. Adjustments in the rent-price ratio can theoretically occur through the numerator, the...

In early 2004, we published a paper describing a simple model of asset allocation for pension plans that incorporates the concept of equity duration. We believe that a diversified portfolio of equities and bonds can be immunized and lowers the risk of deficits. Akin to the well-known concept of...

The proliferation of 130/30 products has raised interesting questions in terms of how they should be benchmarked. The use of leveraged long and short positions renders them different, at least at first blush, to traditional long only products. In this paper, we explore various benchmarking...