Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of operating leverage, and the subsequent abandonment option available to managers, on the relationship between corporate earnings and optimal financial leverage, thereby providing an alternative (rational) explanation for the...

This paper studies the exposure of Australian gold mining firms to changes in the gold price. We use a theoretical framework to formulate testable hypotheses regarding the gold exposure of gold mining firms. The empirical analysis based on all gold mining firms in the S&P/ASX All Ordinaries Gold...

The global financial crisis of 2008 was a crisis affecting both the financial sector and the “real economy”. This paper analyzes the transmission of unexpected shocks from the financial sector in the US to other countries and sectors. We test the hypothesis that the financial crisis spread...

The price of gold is influenced by a wide range of local and global factors such as commodity prices, interest rates, inflation expectations, exchange rate changes and stock market volatility among others. Hence, forecasting the price of gold is a notoriously difficult task and the main problem...

This paper studies recurring annual events potentially introducing seasonality into gold prices. We analyze gold returns for each month from 1980 to 2010 and find that September and November are the only months with positive and statistically significant gold price changes. This “autumn...

This paper proposes a definition for financial market stability and an econometric test. It analyzes the impact of systematic and systemic shocks on developed and emerging market stock indices in normal and extreme market conditions. Financial market stability is defined as a constant impact of...

This paper proposes a multivariate test to measure the statistical and economic significance of contagion through analysis of extreme unobserved common shocks. Contagious episodes are endogenously determined with no need, but the possibility, to specify the source country. Application to a panel...

This paper analyzes the existence of flights from stocks to bonds and vice versa. We propose a definition and a test for flight-to-quality, flight-from-quality and cross-asset contagion and examine their characteristics and effects for the financial system. The empirical analysis for eight...

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of gold in the global financial system. We test the hypothesis that gold represents a safe haven against stocks of major emerging and developing countries. A descriptive and econometric analysis for a sample spanning a 30 year period from 1979 to...

The global financial crisis of 2008 was a crisis affecting both the financial sector and the “real economy”. This paper analyzes the transmission of unexpected shocks from the financial sector in the US to other countries and sectors. We test the hypothesis that the financial crisis spread...