This paper considers the financial optimization problem of a firm with several sub-businesses striving for its optimal RORAC. An insightful example shows that the implementation of classical gradient capital allocation can be suboptimal if division managers are allowed to venture into all...

This paper shows theoretically and empirically that beta- and volatility-based low risk anomalies are driven by return skewness. The empirical patterns con- cisely match the predictions of our model which generates skewness of stock returns via default risk. With increasing downside risk, the...

We consider portfolio selection under nonparametric alpha-maxmin ambiguity in the neighbourhood of a reference distribution. We show strict concavity of the portfolio problem under ambiguity aversion.Implied demand functions are nondifferentiable, resemble observed bid-ask spreads, and are...