In the context of an international portfolio diversification problem, we find that small capitalization equity portfolios become riskier in bear markets, i.e. display negative co-skewness with other stock indices and high co-kurtosis. Because of this feature, a power utility investor ought to...

In this paper we extend the traditional life cycle model of saving and portfolio choice to allow for possible long-term unemployment spells to have permanent effects on subsequent labor income prospects. The risk of losing future labor income could imply strong human capital erosion for the...

Recent research [e.g., DeMiguel, Garlappi and Uppal, (2009), Rev. Fin. Studies] has cast doubts on the out-of-sample performance of optimizing portfolio strategies relative to naive, equally weighted ones. However, existing results concern the simple case in which an investor has a one-month...