This volume was prepared by Inga Heiland while she was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in July 2016 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It comprises five chapters addressing one or more aspects of international trade and...

The rise of a crisis-prone banking sector and its political power has received significant attention following the most recent financial crisis. The crisis sparked a growing interest in understanding how and why we have created a world of large, unstable banks. Excessive banking activity arose...

This dissertation consists of three papers referring to the pricing of insurance-linked securities, while a fourth one deals with investigating the dynamics of foreign exchange implied volatility and correlation surfaces. The first paper proposes a novel risk-neutral pricing approach for...