Using 5 minute data, we examine market volatility in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the presence of trading collars. We use a polynomial specification for capturing intraday seasonality. Results indicate that market volatility is 3.4 percent higher in declining markets when trading collars...

The participation of intermediaries in either public policy or private markets can be justified on the basis of efficiency gains. With respect to private insurance company involvement in the U.S. crop insurance program, efficiency gains may arise from either decreased transaction costs through...

Studies on the importance of skewness for investors find a negative relation between the risk premium and skewness, implying preference for positive skewness. Hedge funds (or money managers in general), however, acting as agents, may have preference for negative skewness as it would mean...

Recently, independent of each other, there has been interest in (i) time-variation in higher-order moments; (ii) idiosyncratic skewness and predictability of skewness in the asset pricing context; and (iii) robust measures of skewness and kurtosis. The second literature questions the usefulness...

Using Form PF filings over 2013–2017, we find that funds maintain higher levels of cash holdings and available borrowing (“liquidity buffers”) when they hold more illiquid assets, have shorter-term commitments from investors and creditors, and when market volatility is greater. We also...

We modify Adrian and Brunnermeier's (2011) CoVaR, the Value-at-Risk (VaR) of the financial system conditional on an institution being in financial distress. We change the definition of financial distress from an institution being exactly at its VaR to being at most at its VaR. This change allows...

Forecasting exchange rate movements is extremely difficult. While the usual forecast requires determining the size and sign of change, we investigate if the direction of change alone is easier to forecast. The accuracy rate of monthly forecasts based on an economic model is compared with random...