Hedge funds, with assets under management approaching an estimated $1.5 trillion in 2006, have become important players in the U.S. and global capital markets. These largely unregulated funds differ from other market participants in their use of a variety of complex trading strategies and...

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a report -- New Directions for Understanding Systemic Risk -- that presents key findings from a cross-disciplinary conference that it cosponsored in May 2006 with the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Mathematical Sciences and Their...

In April 1995, central banks in twenty-six countries conducted a global survey of the financial derivatives markets' size and structure. The authors' analysis of the survey results suggests that at the time of the survey, dealers in the aggregate assumed only small exposures to price risks in...