Although multi-asset portfolios are central in modern finance, the multivariate statistical estimation involved in portfolio selection and management is not an easy task. This article focuses on the problem of estimating the probability of multi-asset portfolio large losses. We present a...

We develop a new methodology that measures conditional dependency. We achieve this by using copula functions that link marginal distributions, here chosen to obey a GARCH-type model with time-varying skewness and kurtosis. We apply this model to daily returns of stock-market indices. We find...

In this paper we empirically investigate the consequences of domestic systemic risk for stock market investors. To tackle this issue, we consider two different investment strategies. One strategy is to be 'crisis-conscious,' i.e. taking the possibility of systemic events into account, the other...

We examine the impact of performance groups on the estimation of therelative importance of ¯rm, industry and other e®ects on corporate performance.Performance groups comprise ¯rms from the same industry with asimilar performance over a longer period of time. We present a statisticalmethod...

In this paper we determine optimal trading strategies associated withthe financial variance and standard deviation principles of Schweizer (1997). These principles take into consideration the possibilities of hedging on the financial market and are derived by an indifference argument, which...

Recently, Diebold and Li (2003) obtained good forecasting results foryield curves in a reparametrized Nelson-Siegel framework. We analyze similarmodeling approaches for price curves of variance swaps that serve nowadaysas hedging instruments for options on realized variance. We consider the...

We explore the pricing of variance risk by decomposing stocks' total variance into systematicand idiosyncratic return variances. While systematic variance risk exhibits a negative priceof risk, common shocks to the variances of idiosyncratic returns carry a large positive riskpremium. This...

Applied researchers often test for the difference of the variance of two investment strategies;in particular, when the investment strategies under consideration aim to implementthe global minimum variance portfolio. A popular tool to this end is the F-test for theequality of variances....

We derive an explicit formula of the Watts’ poverty index, in terms of parametersof bivariate lognormal distributions of price indices and nominal livingstandards. This result enables us to: analyse the contributions of the distributionsof prices and nominal living standards in poverty;...