The Paper shows why and how the excessive use of commercial paper by financial institutions and corporations contributed to the vulnerability of the Korean economy to external shocks. We review the unfolding process of the Korean currency crisis,focusing on the role of the commercial paper. We...

This paper analyses the effect of soliciting a rating on the rating outcome of banks. This type of analysis sheds light on an important policy question, namely whether there is a difference in treatment between banks which request a rating and those which do not. Using a sample of Asian banks...

The relationship between the performance of mutual funds and their subsequent growth is examined. The focus of our paper is on the influence of the position of a fund within its family. So far only the influence of the position of a fund within its segment on its subsequent inflows has been...

The link between informed trading and the bid-ask spread has been the focus of abundant literature and some authors feared that a large amount of informed trading might lead to shutdown of markets. We explore this issue using data from the Czech Republic. Our estimates confirm that the share of...

The scaling properties encompass in a simple analysis many of the volatility characteristics of financial markets. That is why we use them to probe the different degree of markets development. We empirically study the scaling properties of daily Foreign Exchange rates, Stock Market indices and...

Conventional cost accounting assumes that the relation between cost and volume is symmetric for volume increases and decreases. We test an alternative model where costs increase more when activity rises than they decrease when activity falls by an equivalent amount. We find, for a sample of...

In this article we present new results for the pricing of arithmetic Asian options within a Black-Scholes context. To derive these results we make extensive use of the local scale invariance that exists in the theory of contingent claim pricing. This allows us to derive, in a natural way, a...

One of the most relevant issues in the risk analysis of the financial institutions´ investments is to determine the capital allocation in order to maintain its solvency and liquidity in adverse situations. The portfolio risk analysis is necessary for assuring the right selection of that capital...

Under the assumption of information asymmetry between market investors and firm managers, a reduced form model of a firm is developed in order to derive optimal investment strategies and capital structures while taking into account the effects of dividend policies and taxes. The motivation of...