This paper compares the communication strategies of the Fed and the ECB and their impact on financial markets. Interest rates options were used to calculate daily probability distributions of market expectations and to examine how they are modified by central banks’ announcements. We found...

Exploiting cross-sectional and time-series variations in European regulations during the July 2008 – June 2009 period, we show that: 1) Prohibition on covered short selling raises bid-ask spread and reduces trading volume, 2) Prohibition on naked short selling raises both volatility and...

This paper examines the advantages of incorporating strategic exposure to equity volatility into the investment-opportunity set of a long-term equity investor. We consider two standard volatility investments: implied volatility and volatility risk premium strategies. To calibrate and assess the...

This paper investigates modern finance’s epistemological status with a special emphasis on its most quantitative part: Black-Scholes option pricing model and its extensions. It zeroes on the analysis of mathematical methods in financial economics and their connection to risk and uncertainty....

Les fonds à capital garanti proposés par les institutions financières connaissent une grande popularité. Pourtant, ce type de placement peut souvent être mis en œuvre facilement par l’investisseur individuel à moindres frais via un recours direct aux marchés financiers. Sur base d'un...

Currency and interest rate swaps are subject to a complex, two-sided default risk. Several theoretical papers have recently addressed the problem of pricing swap credit risk. We implement a recent credit risk pricing model in order to attempt to evaluate a line of research in theoretical credit...

Currency and interest rate swaps are subject to a complex, two-sided default risk. Although several theoretical papers have recently addressed the problem of pricing swap credit risk, the empirical literature is almost non-existent. This is the only study we know of that uses actual transaction...

The volatility estimation is a crucial problem for pricing derivatives. The traditional implied volatility approach induces the undesired smile effect and is therefore inconsistent with the market reality. A second more realistic approach is due to Bensoussan, Crouhy and Galai (1995) who derive...

We present a time series model that integrates properties from Levy-type and multifractal models. Formally, it is a stochastic volatility model with discrete time steps, t-distributed return innovations and a stochastic cascade for the volatility process. This model reproduces very well...