We present a two-factor stochastic default intensity and interest rate model for pricing single-name default swaptions. The specific positive square root processes considered fall in the relatively tractable class of affine jump diffusions while allowing for inclusion of stochastic volatility...

Global portfolio optimization models rank among the proudest achievements of modern finance theory, but practitioners are still struggling to put them to work. In 1992, Black and Litterman put the problem down to difficulties portfolio managers have in extrapolating views about some expected...

This paper extends the normal mixture diffusion (NMD) local volatility model of Brigo and Mercurio (2000, 2001a,b, 2002) so that it explains both short-term and long-term smile effects. Short-term smile effects are captured by a local volatility model where excess kurtosis in the price density...

The likely imposition by regulators of minimum standards for capital to cover 'other risks' has been a driving force behind the recent interest in operational risk management. Much discussion has been centered on the form of capital charges for other risks. At the same time major banks are...

The recent publication by the Basel Committee of CP2.5, the working paper on Operational Risk Capital Charges, has shed new light on the methods that will be proposed for the measurement of operational risks in the Basel II Accord. This paper examines the foundations of the Internal Measurement...

Although the inclusion of hedge funds in an investment portfolio can significantly improve that portfolio’s mean-variance characteristics, it can also be expected to lead to significantly lower skewness and higher kurtosis. In this paper we show how this highly undesirable side-effect can be...

MTS Time Series: Market and Data Description for the European Bond and Repo Database Alfonso Dufour and Frank Skinner MTS Time Series is a new source of high frequency and daily data for European fixed income markets. For the first time academic researchers and market practitioners have...

Many recent papers have documented the existence of periodicities in returns, return volatility, bid-ask spreads and trading volume, in both equity and foreign exchange markets. In this paper, we propose and employ a new test for detecting subtle periodicities in financial markets based on a...

Models that are based on mean-variance analysis seek portfolio weights to minimise the variance of the portfolio for a given level of return. The portfolio variance is measured using a covariance matrix that represents the volatility and correlation of asset returns. However these matrices are...