The objective of the report is to provide European Union (EU) policymakers with an actionable toolbox for how they can contribute to mobilising private finance for climate-friendly investments. Climatefriendly investments are defined as investments aligned with the transition to a low-carbon...

The work report first describes the current developments on the German market for nonperforming loans, which after its peak in spring 2007 is now also affected by the financial crisis. The sale of small and medium-size portfolios is described within the scope of a case study. Furthermore, the...

For more than 30 years, the world's main indices for oil prices – WTI in the US and Brent in Europe – have moved in sync. This changed dramatically in 2011, when WTI started trading at a considerable discount to Brent for almost five years. This disparity violated the “law of one price”...

The economic and political developments of the past years show an increasing importance of a possible risk-reducing of the company due to good ESG performance. Our work contributes by examining the impact of relatively better ESG performance of companies on their implied and historical share...

Retail investors are an essential group in shaping the effects of ESG investing and ESG assets under management are growing at an exponential rate. This study of retail investors' demand generates first evidence on their ESG-relevant decisions. In general, ESG was regarded as a highly...

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

This paper empirically investigates the risk and performance of three types of alternative beta products 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). We show that IHFIs are...