We investigate the performance of a sample of German mutual equity funds overthe period from 1994 to 2003. Our general finding is that mutual funds, on average,hardly produce excess returns relative to their benchmark that are large enough tocover their expenses. This conclusion is drawn from a...

This paper investigates the impact of individual bank fundamental variables onstock market returns using data from a panel of 235 European banks from 1991to 2005. The sample period marks a significant transition in the European bankingsector, characterized by higher competition, lower profit...

Arbitrage pricing cannot be applied to commodity futures because the physicalcommodity does not represent a pure asset: Since consumption and processing of thecommodity can drive down inventories to zero, it is not always possible to construct areplicating portfolio for the futures contract, and...

This paper examines properties of mean-variance inefficient proxieswith respect to producing a linear relation between expected returnsand betas. The numerical results of a Monte Carlo simulation showthat in the CAPM slightly inefficient, positively weighted proxies causean almost perfect linear...

The question of whether the CEO should also serve as chairman of the board is one of themost hotly debated issues in the recent corporate governance discussion. While agencytheoreticarguments advocate a separation of decision and control functions, the empiricalevidence focusing on U.S....

This paper provides a discussion about some recent issues related to the transfer ofcredit risk (CRT) from the perspective of global liquidity. The CRT market is enormouslygrowing and exhibits major structural shifts in terms of buyers and sellers ofprotection. I try to address these issues from...

Im vorliegenden kurzen Beitrag diskutieren wir Fragestellungen, die bei der Bewertungdieser sicherheitspolitischen Entwicklung Eingang finden sollten. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist dieDarstellung von theoretischen Argumenten und empirischen Erkenntnissen, welche es unteranderem bei der Planung und...

This paper investigates the role that discrimination plays in the educational marginalizationof foreign youth commonly observed in European countries with a long guestworkertradition. Economic theory offers two basic explanations for discrimination ofthis form: taste-based discrimination arising...

A framework is proposed for organizing phenomena related to the (mis)predictionof utility, in particular neglecting adaptation. A categorization is introduced that accounts forasymmetries in misprediction. In decision-making, goods and activities satisfying extrinsicdesires are more salient than...

Environmental policy often has to be devised under informational constraints,like uncertainty and asymmetric information. We consider an environmentalpolicy that aims at reducing the welfare losses caused by asymmetricinformation while being sufficiently simple for implementation. Inthis policy,...