This paper studies ’Stylised Facts’ and ’Determinants’ of short-and long-termCDS-spreads of banks. As short-term spreads we choose 6M-, as long-termspreads we choose 5Y-spreads. In the section ’Stylised Facts’ we found thatthe correlation between short- and long-term spreads for the...

The paper examines the key drivers of gold investment. Since 2000 the gold price has risendrastically, making gold an interesting add-on to a portfolio. As gold futures have negativeroll returns, gold pool accounts are characterized by high credit risk and physical possessionof gold means high...

The paper deals with the evaluation of Collateralized Debt Obligations forinvestment purposes. CDOs are classified in the asset backed environment. Itsspecific risks (market, timing, recovery, agency) are discussed. To understand theportfolio aspect, the concept of the diversity score is...

This paper empirically investigates the risk and performance of three types of alternative betaproducts over the January 2002 to September 2009 time period: funds of hedge funds (FHFs),investable hedge fund indices (IHFIs), and hedge fund replication strategies (HFRS). Weshow that IHFIs are true...

Implied Base Correlations of Single-tranche CDOs on standardized Credit Indices such asthe iTraxx Europe have been used in the credit derivatives market for price communication.During the financial crisis, implied correlations have been quite volatile indicating thegrowing fraction of systematic...

Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) were established in Europe in 2000 and have grown to a sizeof over 200 bn US$. Some issuers use a full replication strategy while others prefer a swapbased approach. The ETF are dealt parallelly in the primary and in the secondary market, asnew ETFs can be created at...

This paper studies the effects that heterogeneous multiple bank financing hason a firm’s risk- and information-policy, particularly with respect to credit rene-gotiation efficiency. We find that a significant, yet limited, degree of relationshiplending enables firms with high asset specificity...

Most previous research on efficiency in banking takes a regulatory perspective. In contrast,this paper investigates the empirical relation between efficiency and profitability in five largeeconomies of the European Union during the period 1998-2005 and discusses the results fromthe perspective...

Neuroeconomics stays in the center of the ongoing naturalistic turn in economics. It portraysthe individual as a complex system of decision making mechanisms and modules. This resultsinto a conceptual tension with the standard economic notion of the unity of the actor that is asystemic property...

This paper examines the financing structure of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) inGermany and questions whether an equity gap – or, more generally, a financing gap - exists.Reviewing the literature and available data sources, we find that financing constraints seem toaffect, if at...