The reaction of EU bond and equity market volatilities to sovereign rating announcements (Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, and Fitch) is investigated using a panel of daily stock market and sovereign bond returns. The parametric volatilities are filtered using EGARCH specifications. The...

The reaction of EU bond and equity market volatilities to sovereign rating announcements (Standard & Poor's, Moody's, and Fitch) is investigated using a panel of daily stock market and sovereign bond returns. The parametric volatilities are filtered using EGARCH specifications. The estimation...

In this paper we study risk-neutral densities (RNDs) for the German stock market. The use of option prices allows us to quantify the risk-neutral probabilities of various levels of the DAX index. For the period from December 1995 to November 2001, we implement the mixture of log-normals model...

In this paper we assess the importance given in capital markets to the credibility of the European fiscal framework. We evaluate to which extent relevant fiscal policy events taking place in the course of 2002 produced a reaction in the long-term bond segment of the capital markets. Firstly, we...

In this paper, we investigate the determinants of the Euro term structure of credit spreads. More specifically, we analyze whether the sensitivity of credit spread changes to financial and macroeconomic variables depends on bond characteristics such as rating and maturity. According to the...

This paper develops a rigorous econometric framework to investigate the structure of codependence between random variables and to test whether it changes over time. Our approach is based on the computation - over both a test and a benchmark period - of the conditional probability that a random...

This paper investigates whether comovements between euro area equity returns at national and industry level have changed after the introduction of the euro. By adopting a regression quantile-based methodology, we find that after 1999 the degree of comovements among euro area national equity...

This paper investigates whether comovements between euro area equity returns at national and industry level have changed after the introduction of the euro. By adopting a regression quantile-based methodology, we find that after 1999 the degree of comovements among euro area national equity...

We decompose euro area sovereign bond yields into five distinct components: i) expected future short-term risk-free rates and a term premium, ii) default risk premium, iii) redenomination risk premium, iv) liquidity risk premium, and a v) segmentation (convenience) premium. Iden- tification is...

This paper shows how the problem of mean-downside risk portfolio allocation can be cast in terms of penalized least squares (PLS). The penalty is given by a power function of the returns below a certain threshold. We derive the asymptotic properties of the PLS estimator, allowing for possible...