We develop a novel contract design, the fed funds futures (FFF) variance futures, which reflects the expected realized basis point variance of an underlying FFF rate. The valuation of short-term FFF variance futures is completely model-independent in a general setting that includes the cases...

A timely guide to understanding and implementing credit derivatives Credit derivatives are here to stay and will continue to play a role in finance in the future. But what will that role be? What issues and challenges should be addressed? And what lessons can be learned from the credit mess?...

Especially structured finance instruments were blamed as main reason for the financial crisis 2007, but the understanding for the motivation to originate securitization products is less discovered. Therefor this paper tries to identify main balance sheet characteristics of structured finance...