In 2007 and 2008 world food markets observed a significant price boom. Crop failures simultaneously occurring in some of the world's major production regions have been quoted as one factor among others for the price boom. Against this background, we analyse the stochasticity of crop yields in...

This paper addresses the open debate about the effectiveness and practical relevance of highfrequency (HF) data in portfolio allocation. Our results demonstrate that when used with proper econometric models, HF data offers gains over daily data and more importantly these gains are maintained...

We examine the effects of collateralized borrowing in a realistically parameterized life-cycle portfolio choice problem. We provide basic intuition in a two-period model and then solve a multi-period model computationally. Our analysis provides insights into life-cycle portfolio choice relevant...

Using a recent Spanish database, we show that remittances respond to cross country differences in portfolio values. This behavior suggests that immigrants are sophisticated economic optimizers who take advantage of opportunities to invest trans-nationally given the networks that immigrants are...

The capital management problem posed by R. H. Strotz is analyzed for the case of the naive planner who fails to anticipate changes in his own preferences. By imposing progressively stronger restrictions on the primitives of the problem - namely, the discounting function, the utility index...

There are a number of reasons to assume that significant interdependences exist between the financial asset markets and the housing market. Identifying the linkages between stock, bond and housing markets may improve return forecasts in different asset markets. Interdependence and predictability...

This paper presents statistical analysis supporting stylized facts about sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). It discusses the forces leading to the growth of SWFs, including the role of fuel exports and ongoing current account surpluses, and large hoarding of international reserves. It analyzes the...

This paper presents a rational expectations model of asset prices with rationally inattentive investors that, unlike previous papers, explains both the substantial amount of equity wealth invested domestically and the puzzling time series behavior of the home bias - an initial plateau before...

This paper empirically investigates the effects of differential income taxation on households' portfolio choice and asset allocation applying a two-stage budgeting model of asset demand to German survey data. The model is structured into the discrete asset choice and the continuous asset choice,...

This paper addresses the issue of international payments in a stock-flow framework, by capturing the interaction between the current account balance and international assets portfolios of domestic and foreign investors. It is argued that the stability of such interaction may be affected by...