Actual portfolios contain fewer stocks than are implied by standard financial analysis that balances the costs of diversification against the benefits in terms of the standard deviation of the returns. Suppose a safety first investor cares about downside risk and recognizes the heavytail feature...

Consider the portfolio problem of choosing the mix between stocks and bonds under a downside risk constraint. Typically stock returns exhibit fatter tails than bonds corresponding to their greater downside risk. Downside risk criteria like the safety first criterion therefore often select corner...

Estimators of regression coefficients are known to be asymptotically normally distributed, provided certain regularity conditions are satisfied. In small samples and if the noise is not normally distributed, this can be a poor guide to the quality of the estimators. The paper addresses this...

The forward premium puzzle (FPP) is the negative correlation between the forward premium and the realized exchange rate return at maturities of a month and beyond. Some recent evidence shows that at maturities of multiple years and at the highest intra day frequency the correlation is positive...

Exchange rate returns are fat-tailed distributed. We provide evidence that the apparent non-normality derives from the behavior of macroeconomic fundamentals. Economic and probabilistic arguments are offered for such a relationship. Empirical support is given by testing against normality and...