We investigate the effects of introducing a central clearing counterparty (CCP) on securities prices by adopting as an experimental construct the 2009 CCP reform in three Nordic markets. We find that, relative to other European economies, these countries experience market-adjusted equity returns...

Bank holding companies (BHCs) invest in risky projects through bank entities or sell projects for a fee, thus engaging in shadow banking. BHCs can increase their fee income by guaranteeing sold projects with a recourse to the bank's balance sheet. When the expected guarantee repayments depend on...

Islamic strictures require investors to share risks with the entrepreneurs they finance. Sukuk (Islamic securities) come mostly in two varieties, musharakah (basically a joint venture agreement) and ijarah (more like an operational lease agreement). Yet defaults did happen, even in the case of...

We examine whether the drastic improvement in liquidity in the US stockmarket after 2003 has impacted the systematic exposures of hedge funds to theUS-stock market. The relation between market exposure and Amihud’s illiquiditymeasure reverses significantly around a breakpoint situated...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the <A HREF="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092753981400098X">'Journal of Empirical Finance'</A> (2014). Volume 29, pages 435-447. <P> We model the impact of financial conditions on asset market volatility and correlation. We propose extensions of (factor-)GARCH models for volatility and DCC models for...</p></a>

Recent research reveals that hedge fund returns exhibit a range of different,possibly non-linear pay-off patterns. It is difficult to qualify all these patternssimultaneously as being rational in a traditional framework for optimal financial decisionmaking. In this paper we present a simple...

Regulators often set value-at-risk (VaR) constraints to limit the portfolio risk of institutional investors. For some investors, notably pension funds, the VaR constraint is enforced over a horizon which is significantly shorter than the investment horizon of the investor. Our paper aims to...

This study assesses the relative performance of Greek equity funds employing a non-parametric method, namely Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Specifically, we evaluate the funds’ total productivity change using the DEA-based Malmquist Index. Our results reveal significant losses in funds’...

For the HFT investors the crucial factors of strategy to be applied are the spread value and transaction costs. The goal of our preliminary examination was to see, if the present WSE fee plans are suitable for a typical HFT strategy, like based on statistical arbitrage mean reverse strategy. We...

This paper endeavours to assess the viability of the FONGS FINRURAL, a nascent network of 09 rural savings and credit cooperatives in Senegal. More specifically it strives to measure first how the social and financial performance and the governance vary among the network affiliated...