This paper documents that at the individual stock level insiders sales peak many months before a large drop in the stock price, while insiders purchases peak only the month before a large jump. We provide a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon based on trading constraints and asymmetric...

The Markowitz mean-variance optimizing framework has served as the basis for modern portfolio theory for more than 50 years. However, efforts to translate this theoretical foundation into a viable portfolio construction algorithm have been plagued by technical difficulties stemming from the...

Recent empirical work suggests a strong connection between the incentives money managers are offered and their risk-taking behavior. We develop a general model of delegated portfolio management, with the feature that the agent can control the riskiness of the portfolio. This represents a...

Returns on international equities are characterized by jumps; moreover, these jumps tend to occur at the same time across countries leading to systemic risk .In this Paper, we evaluate whether systemic risk reduces substantially the gains from international diversification. First, in order to...

This paper uses a unique data set of Latin American paintings auctioned by Sotheby's between 1995 and 2002 to investigate several puzzles from the recent auctions literature. Our results suggest that: (1) the reputation of an artist and the provenance of the artwork, omitted variables in most...