Empirical studies document that investors typically deviate significantly from a globally market value weighted portfolio, concentrating their portfolio holdings in securities domiciled in their home country and in familiar foreign markets. Evidence that home country concentration stems from an...

In times of financial distress, central banks provide unlimited liquidity to avoid fire sales. In response, banks raise their demand for collateral assets, and the short-term scarcity of collateral securities leads to higher prices, the Fire Buy premium. To avoid collateral scarcity, central...

We examine the effect of options trading volume on the stock price response to earnings announcements over the period 1996–2007. Contrary to prior studies, we find no significant difference in the immediate stock price response to earnings information announcements between firms with listed...

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of gold in the global financial system. We test the hypothesis that gold represents a safe haven against stocks of major emerging and developing countries. A descriptive and econometric analysis for a sample spanning a 30 year period from 1979-2009...

This paper documents how currency speculators trade when international capital flows generate predictable exchange rate movements. The redefinition of the MSCI world equity index in December 2000 provides an ideal natural experiment identifying exogenous capital flows of index tracking equity...

The paper suggests a nonlinear and multivariate time series model framework that enables the study of simultaneity in returns and in volatilities, as well as asymmetric effects arising from shocks. Using daily data 2000-2006 for the Baltic state stock exchanges and that of Moscow we find...

We investigate the role of information asymmetries and inflation hedging in shaping international equity portfolios. We confirm, in a multinational setting, Cooper and Kaplanis (1994) result of no inflation hedging motive driving investors' behavior and find evidence of a crucial role for...

The shift of perspective from a national basis to a Euro area basis, inevitably induced by EMU, has led member countries to a parallel shift from equity home bias to equity Euro bias. We interpret this evidence by means of a standard mean-variance portfolio selection model modified in order to...

In this paper we examine whether sustainability characteristics of stocks and bonds affect asset allocations of wealthy retail investors. Using a large proprietary dataset of a private bank with monthly investment holdings of European private wealth investors, we document significantly larger...

Over the past fifteen years, passive investing has seen 1.5 trillion dollars of fund inflows while active investing has seen 500 billion of outflows. These numbers are in line with the tenets of passive investing, which assert it is close to impossible to consistently outperform the market. We...