FMC² Research Collection

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  • Publication
    Re-examining the risk–return relationship in Europe: Linear or non-linear trade-off?
    This paper analyzes the risk–return trade-off in Europe using recent data from 11 European stock markets. After relaxing the linear assumptions in the risk–return relationship by introducing a new approach that considers the current state of the market, we obtain significant evidence for a positive risk–return trade-off for low volatility states. However, this finding is reduced or even non-significant during periods of high volatility. Maintaining the linear assumption over the risk–return trade-off leads to non-significant estimations for all cases. These results are robust across countries despite the conditional volatility model used. These results also demonstrate that the inconclusive results in previous studies may be due to strong linear assumptions when modeling the risk–return trade-off. This previous research fails to uncover the global behavior of the relationship between return and risk.
    Scopus© Citations 25  706
  • Publication
    Foster-Hart optimal Portfolios
    We reinvestigate the classic portfolio optimization problem where the notion of portfolio risk is captured by the 'Foster–Hart risk'—a new, bankruptcy-proof, reserve based measure of risk, extremely sensitive to left tail events (Foster and Hart, 2009). To include financial market frictions induced by market microstructure, we employ a general, ex-ante transaction cost function with fixed, linear and quadratic penalty terms in the objective function. We represent the US equity market by the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) index and study the performance of the Foster–Hart optimal DJIA portfolio. In order to capture the skewed and leptokurtotic nature of real life stock returns, we model the returns of the DJIA constituents as an ARMA–GARCH process with multivariate 'normal tempered stable' innovations. We demonstrate that the Foster–Hart optimal portfolio’s performance is superior to those obtained under several techniques currently in use in academia and industry.
    Scopus© Citations 26  520
  • Publication
    Sovereign and Bank CDS Spreads: Two Sides of the Same Coin?
    (Elsevier, 2014-09-01) ;
    This paper investigates the relationship between sovereign and bank CDS spreads with reference to their ability to convey timely signals on the default risk of European sovereign countries and their banking systems. By using a sample of six major European economies, we find that sovereign and bank CDS spreads are cointegrated variables at the country level. We then perform a more in-depth investigation of the underlying price discovery mechanisms. By decomposing the noise and speed of adjustment components of the price discovery, we find that both variables have an important price discovery role in the period 2004-2013. Most developed countries (Germany, Sweden) show a clear leading role for bank CDS spreads throughout the sample period, whereas most distressed European economies (Portugal and Spain) are governed by a leading role for their sovereign CDS spreads during both the sub-prime crisis and the subsequent European sovereign debt crisis.
    Scopus© Citations 33  423
  • Publication
    Anatomy of a Bail-in
    (Elsevier, 2014-12-01) ;
    To mitigate potential contagion from future banking crises, the European Commission recently proposed a framework which would provide for the bail-in of bank creditors in the event of failure. In this study, we examine this framework retrospectively in the context of failed European banks during the global financial crisis. Empirical findings suggest that equity and subordinated bond holders would have been the main losers from the €535 billion impairment losses realized by failed European banks. Losses attributed to senior debt holders would, on aggregate, have been proportionally small, while no losses would have been imposed on depositors. Cross-country analysis, incorporating stress-tests, reveals a divergence of outcomes with subordinated debt holders wiped out in a number of countries, while senior debt holders of Greek, Austrian and Irish banks would have required bail-in.
    Scopus© Citations 30  324
  • Publication
    Performance of Utility Based Hedges
    (Elsevier, 2015-05) ;
    Hedgers as investors are concerned with both risk and return; however the literature has generally neglected the role of both returns and investor risk aversion by its focus on minimum variance hedging. In this paper we address this by using utility based performance metrics to evaluate the hedging effectiveness of utility based hedges for hedgers with both moderate and high risk aversion together with the more traditional minimum variance approach. We apply our approach to two asset classes, equity and energy, for three different hedging horizons, daily, weekly and monthly. We find significant differences between the minimum variance and utility based hedges and their attendant performance in-sample for all frequencies. However out of sample performance differences persist for the monthly frequency only.
    Scopus© Citations 17  324