This paper analyses the risk and return of loans portfolios in a joint setting. I develop a model to obtain the distribution of loans returns. I use this model to describe the investment opportunity set of lenders using mean-variance analysis with a Value at Risk constraint. I also obtain closed...

We show that the distribution of any portfolio whose components jointly follow a location-scale mixture of normals can be characterised solely by its mean, variance and skewness. Under this distributional assumption, we derive the mean-variance-skewness frontier in closed form, and show that it...

This paper proposes a parsimonious approach to test non-linear dependence on the conditional mean and variance of hedge funds with respect to several market factors. My approach introduces non-linear dependence by means of empirically relevant polynomial functions of the factors. For comparison...

We derive Lagrange Multiplier and Likelihood Ratio specifi cation tests for the null hypotheses of multivariate normal and Student t innovations using the Generalised Hyperbolic distribution as our alternative hypothesis. We decompose the corresponding Lagrange Multiplier-type tests into...

We derive the statistical properties of the SNP densities of Gallant and Nychka (1987). We show that these densities, which are always positive, are more flexible than truncated Gram-Charlier expansions with positivity restrictions. We use the SNP densities for financial derivatives valuation....

This paper develops a flexible and computationally efficient model to estimate the credit loss distribution of the loans in a banking system. We consider a sectorial structure, where default frequencies and the total number of loans are allowed to depend on macroeconomic conditions as well as on...

We conduct an extensive empirical analysis of VIX derivative valuation models before, during and after the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Since the restrictive mean reversion and heteroskedasticity features of existing models yield large distortions during the crisis, we propose generalisations...