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This paper investigates the price determinants and investment performance of art. We apply a hedonic regression analysis to a new data set of over one million auction transactions of paintings and works on paper. Based on the resulting price index, we conclude that art has appreciated in value by a moderate 3.97% per year, in real U.S. dollar terms, between 1957 and 2007. This is a performance similar to that of corporate bonds – at much higher risk. A repeat-sales regression on a subset of the data demonstrates the robustness of our index. Next, quantile regressions document larger average price appreciations (and higher volatilities) in more expensive price brackets. We also find variation in historical returns across mediums and movements. Finally, we show that measures of high-income consumer confidence and art market sentiment predict art price trends.

Inadequate regulation of the financial system is widely thought to have contributed to the financial crisis. The purpose of the book is to articulate a framework within which financial regulation can be analysed in a coherent and comprehensive fashion. The book’s approach is distinctive in several respects. First, it views the subject from a multidisciplinary perspective of economics, finance and law. Second, it takes a holistic approach, starting from the premise that financial regulation is best understood in the context of an appreciation of the entire financial system. Third it is international and comparative in nature, contrasting approaches, in particular in the EU and US. The book focuses on underlying policies and the objectives of regulation, using specific regulatory measures as examples. This allows the reader to compare choices in respect of the same policy issue in different regulatory frameworks. This introductory chapter sets out the motivation for the project and outlines the book’s analytic framework and contents.

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) have recently been adopted in a number of jurisdictions, including the European Union. Despite the importance of IFRS in the context of global accounting standards harmonization, little is known regarding what institutional factors influence countries' decisions to voluntarily adopt IFRS. This issue is relevant to standard setters because a better understanding of the motivations for adoption will enable them to promote IFRS more effectively to countries that currently do not employ IFRS. Consistent with bonding theory, we find that countries with weaker investor protection mechanisms are more likely to adopt IFRS. Our evidence also shows that jurisdictions that are perceived to provide better access to their domestic capital markets are more likely to adopt IFRS. Taken together, our results are consistent with the view that IFRS represent a vehicle through which countries can improve investor protection and make their capital markets more accessible to foreign investors.

Spanish Abstract: En esta monografía se describe el modelo de selección de carteras de Harry Markowitz, el modelo diagonal de William Sharpe y se describen los riesgos sistemáticos y específicos. English Abstract: This monograph describes the portfolio selection model designed by Harry Markowitz and the diagonal model by William Sharpe. Systematic risk and specific or idiosyncratic risk are described.

Hedge funds have become increasingly important players in financial markets. This heightened importance has spawned a large academic literature focused on issues pertinent to hedge fund managers, investors, regulators, and policymakers. Although the top-4 finance journals (JF, JFE, RFS, and JFQA) published only 16 papers on hedge funds prior to 2005, they have published 105 papers on hedge funds since 2005. As a result, we felt that it is time to update the survey published in 2005. This update prepared with the help of a new coauthor, Kevin Mullally, extends the previous survey along two dimensions. First, it includes reviews of recent studies on topics that were covered in the earlier survey. Second, it summarizes research on new topics that were not part of the previous survey. These new topics cover a broad gamut of issues ranging from hedge funds’ use of leverage and exposure to different risks to their impact on various asset markets. This survey consists of five broad sections. The first section reviews the literature examining both the time-series and cross-sectional variation in hedge fund performance. Time-series performance studies cover return generating processes, dynamic risk exposures, and determination of managerial skill. The second section covers studies focused on the cross-sectional relations between hedge funds’ characteristics (including contractual features and time-varying features such as size and age) and fund performance. The third section analyzes the literature on the sources and nature of risks faced by hedge fund investors. In particular, we discuss risks that can arise from managerial incentives and sources of capital. The fourth section summarizes research on the role of hedge funds in the financial system. Specific topics here include hedge funds’ impact on systemic risk, asset prices, and liquidity provision in financial markets. The fifth and final section focuses on potential biases and limitations of hedge fund data sources.

In a no-arbitrage framework, any variable that affects the pricing of the domestic yield curve has the potential to predict foreign exchange risk premiums. The most widely used interest rate predictor is the difference in short rates across countries, known as carry, but the short rate is only one of many factors affecting domestic yield curves. We find that in addition to interest rate levels other yield curve predictors have significant ability to forecast the cross section of currency returns. In particular, changes of interest rates and term spreads significantly predict excess foreign exchange returns, exhibit low skewness risk, and are lowly correlated with carry returns. Predictability from these yield curve variables persists up to 12 months and is robust to controlling for other predictors of currency returns.

In 2001, a small group of academics and practitioners met to discuss the equity risk premium (ERP). Ten years later, in 2011, a similar discussion took place, with participants writing up their thoughts for this volume. The result is a rich set of papers that practitioners may find useful in developing their own approach to the subject.

We investigate portfolio diversification strategies based on hierarchical clustering. These hierarchical risk parity strategies use graph theory and unsupervised machine learning to build diversified portfolios by acknowledging the hierarchical structure of the investment universe. In this chapter, we consider two dissimilarity measures for clustering a multi-asset multi-factor universe. While the Pearson correlation coefficient is a popular choice, we are especially interested in a measure based on the lower tail dependence coefficient. Such innovation is expected to achieve better tail risk management in the context of allocating to skewed style factor strategies. Indeed, the corresponding hierarchical risk parity strategies seem to have been navigating the associated downside risk better, yet come at the cost of high turnover. A comparison based on block-bootstrapping evidences alternative risk parity strategies along economic factors to be on par in terms of downside risk with those based on statistical clusters.

Private equity fund-of-funds (FoF) investments are now contributing more than 10% of the capital to private equity, i.e. venture capital and buyout. However, their risk profile is not well understood due to the opaque and illiquid market, and the limited access to performance figures. FoFs need to understand their own risk profile, if they are to convince potential investors of their lower risk. Research on direct and fund investments exist. Directs show significant variability of returns with a significant probability of a total loss and extreme profits. Funds are less risky, because they invest in up to twenty direct investments. We show that FoFs even further significantly reduce the risk due to diversification. To this aim, we present a framework to construct the risk profile of FoFs using fund performance data. We also discuss the chosen data source, and the results of the simulations.

Sornette et al. (1996), Sornette and Johansen (1997), Johansen et al. (2000) and Sornette (2003a) proposed that, prior to crashes, the mean function of a stock index price time series is characterized by a power law decorated with log-periodic oscillations, leading to a critical point that describes the beginning of the market crash. This paper reviews the original Log-Periodic Power Law (LPPL) model for financial bubble modelling, and discusses early criticism and recent generalizations proposed to answer these remarks. We show how to fit these models with alternative methodologies, together with diagnostic tests and graphical tools to diagnose financial bubbles in the making in real time. An application of this methodology to the Gold bubble which busted in December 2009 is then presented.

This paper empirically tests five structural models of corporate bond pricing: Those of Merton (1974), Geske (1977), Leland and Toft (1996), Longstaff and Schwartz (1995), and Collin-Dufresne and Goldstein (2001). We implement the models using a sample of 182 bond prices from firms with simple capital structures during the period 1986-1997. The conventional wisdom is that structural models do not generate spreads as high as those seen in the bond market, and true to expectations we find that the predicted spreads in our implementation of the Merton model are too low. The compound option approach of Geske comes much closer to the spreads observed in the market, on average, but still underpredicts spreads. In contrast, the Leland and Toft model substantially overestimates credit risk on most bonds, and especially so for high coupon bonds. The Longstaff and Schwartz model modifies Merton to incorporate a stochastic interest rate and a correlation between interest rates and firm value. While the correlation and the level of interest rates have little effect, higher interest rate volatility leads to higher predicted spreads. However, this and other features of this model result in spreads that are often too high for risky bonds and too low for safe bonds. The target leverage ratio model of Collin-Dufresne and Goldstein helps to raise the spreads on the bonds that were considered very safe by the Longstaff and Schwartz model, but overall tends toward overestimation of credit risk. We conclude that structural models do not systematically underpredict spreads, as the previous literature implies, but accuracy is a problem. Moreover, some of the simplifications made to date lead to overestimation of credit risk on the riskier bonds while scarcely affecting the spreads of the safest bonds.

In this paper, we analyze the usefulness of technical analysis, specifically the widely used moving average trading rule, from an asset allocation perspective. We show that when stock returns are predictable, technical analysis adds value to commonly used allocation rules that invest fixed proportions of wealth in stocks. When there is uncertainty about predictability, the fixed allocation rules combined with technical analysis can outperform the prior-dependent optimal learning rule when the prior is not too informative. Moreover, the technical trading rules are robust to model specification, and they tend to substantially outperform the model-based optimal trading strategies when there is uncertainty about the model governing the stock price.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) refers to an investment made by a company based in one country in to another company based in other country. FDI is often preferred over Foreign Institutional Investments (FII) as it considered to be the most beneficial form of foreign investment for an economy. FDI plays a multidimensional role in the overall development of any economy. It provides a new source for capital, can lead to technological up gradation, skill enhancement and allocative efficiency effects. While FDI is expected to create positive impact on economy, it has also brought in certain negative impact on Indian economy during the past few years. The present study is conducted to study the relationship and analyze the impact of FDI on Indian economy. Flow of FDI for the past 15 years was taken for study( 2000-2015). The impact was studied by testing the correlation with the country’s GDP and Stock Market Indices. Sensex and Nifty were considered as the representative of Indian Stock Market. The study concludes that flow of FDI in to the country plays a dominant role in deciding the stock market movements.

The existing literature typically does not differentiate between security returns and the returns of investors in these securities; usually implicitly, these two concepts are assumed to be the same. However, the returns of stock investors depend not only on the returns of the securities they hold but also on the timing of their capital flows into and out of these securities. This paper suggests a new and more accurate measure of stock investors' historical returns, which involves dollar-weighting of the returns and properly reflects the effect of investors' timing. Theoretically, the essence of dollar-weighted returns is that they value-weight both the cross-section and the time-series of returns. In practical terms, dollar-weighted returns are computed as internal rate of returns (IRRs) from investment projects in which initial market values and contributions from investors (e.g., stock issues) enter with negative signs, and distributions to investors (e.g., dividends, stock repurchases) and final market values enter with positive signs. The empirical results indicate that aggregate dollar-weighted returns are systematically lower than buy-and hold returns. The annual difference is 1.3 percent for the NYSE/AMEX market over 1926-2002, 5.3 percent for Nasdaq over 1973-2002, and averages 1.5 percent for 19 major stock markets around the world over 1973-2004. Thus, this study provides comprehensive evidence that stock investors' actual returns are considerably lower than those from passive holdings and from those documented in the existing literature on historical stock returns. These results have implications for the debate on the equity premium, for the literature on long-run returns following capital flows, for building successful investment strategies, and others.

The 4% rule is the advice many retirees follow for managing spending and investing. We examine this rule’s inefficiencies—the price paid for funding its unspent surpluses and the overpayments made to purchase its spending policy. We show that a typical rule allocates 10–20% of a retiree’s initial wealth to surpluses and an additional 2–4% to overpayments. Further, we argue that even if retirees were to recoup these costs, the 4% rule’s spending plan remains wasteful, since many retirees actually prefer a different, cheaper spending plan.

The prices of exchange-traded funds can deviate significantly from their net asset values, on average fluctuating within a band of about 200 basis points, in spite of the arbitrage mechanism that allows authorized participants to create and redeem shares for the underlying portfolios. The deviations are larger in funds holding international or illiquid securities where net asset values are most difficult to determine in real time. To control for stale pricing of the underlying assets, I introduce a novel approach using the cross-section of prices on a group of similar ETFs. Nevertheless, the average pricing band remains economically significant at about 100 basis points, with even larger mispricings in some asset classes. Active trading strategies exploiting such inefficiencies produce substantial abnormal returns before transaction costs, providing further proof of short-term mean-reversion in ETF prices.

We study the effect of financial crises on hedge fund risk. Using a regime-switching beta model, we separate systematic and idiosyncratic components of hedge fund exposure. The systematic exposure to various risk factors is conditional on market volatility conditions. We find that in the high-volatility regime (when the market is rolling-down and is likely to be in a crisis state) most strategies are negatively and significantly exposed to the Large-Small and Credit Spread risk factors. This suggests that liquidity risk and credit risk are potentially common factors for different hedge fund strategies in the down-state of the market, when volatility is high and returns are very low. We further explore the possibility that all hedge fund strategies exhibit a high volatility regime of the idiosyncratic risk, which could be attributed to contagion among hedge fund strategies. In our sample this event happened only during the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) crisis of 1998. Other crises including the recent subprime mortgage crisis affected hedge funds only through systematic risk factors, and did not cause contagion among hedge funds.

The research on sustainable finance has intensified in the past decade. In this survey, we synthesize recent academic results and models on socially responsible investing (SRI) in equity markets. We split our review into six thematic parts: data issues, investor preferences, link with financial performance, portfolio integration, climate change risk, and theoretical models.

The Basel II Accord requires that banks and other Authorized Deposit-taking Institutions (ADIs) communicate their daily risk forecasts to the appropriate monetary authorities at the beginning of each trading day, using one or more risk models to measure Value-at-Risk (VaR). The risk estimates of these models are used to determine capital requirements and associated capital costs of ADIs, depending in part on the number of previous violations, whereby realised losses exceed the estimated VaR. McAleer, Jimenez-Martin and Perez-Amaral (2009) proposed a new approach to model selection for predicting VaR, consisting of combining alternative risk models, and comparing conservative and aggressive strategies for choosing between VaR models. This paper addresses the question of risk management of risk, namely VaR of VIX futures prices. We examine how different risk management strategies performed during the 2008-09 global financial crisis (GFC). We find that an aggressive strategy of choosing the Supremum of the single model forecasts is preferred to the other alternatives, and is robust during the GFC. However, this strategy implies relatively high numbers of violations and accumulated losses, though these are admissible under the Basel II Accord.

Spanish Abstract: Esta nota contiene un caso real de una empresa que tenía un crédito con tipo de interés variable y contrató un swap para pagar tipo de interés fijo y eliminar su riesgo de interes. La nota tambien contiene 30 comentarios sobre el swap y varias contestaciones a los mismos realizadas por lectores de versiones anteriores de este documento. English Abstract: This note has a real case of a company that had a variable-interest credit and subscribed a swap to pay fixed-interest and so, to eliminate its interest rate risk. The note also has 30 comments about the swap and answers to these comments made by readers of previous versions.

Arbitrage trading strategies are a class of trading strategies that involve buying and selling financial instruments to take advantage of price discrepancies. The goal of arbitrage trading is to make a profit from the differences in prices between securities or markets, without taking on significant directional risk. Arbitrage trading strategies typically rely on quantitative analysis and mathematical models to identify mispricing and execute trades quickly before the market adjusts. In this article, we will introduce five popular arbitrage trading strategies and provide a simple example and reference materials for each strategy.

Microfinance is gathering momentum to become a major force in India. The self-help group (SHG) model with bank lending to groups of (often) poor women without collateral has become an accepted part of rural finance. The paper discusses the state of SHG-based microfinance in India. With traditionally loss-making rural banks shifting their portfolio away from the rural poor in the post-reform period, SHG-based microfinance, nurtured and aided by NGOs, have become an important alternative to traditional lending in terms of reaching the poor without incurring a fortune in operating and monitoring costs. The government and NABARD have recognized this and have emphasized the SHG approach and working along with NGOs in its initiatives. Over half a million SHGs have been linked to banks over the years but a handful of states, mostly in South India, account for over three-fourth of this figure with Andhra Pradesh being an undisputed leader. In spite of the impressive figures, microfinance in India is still presently too small to create a massive impact in poverty alleviation, but if pursued with skill and opportunity development of the poor, it holds the promise to alter the socioeconomic face of the India's poor.

Spanish Abstract: En esta monografía se repasan las principales características de los activos financieros de renta fija: rendimiento, plazo, tipo de interés del cupón, la amortización anticipada, bonos convertibles (CoCos incluidos), los impuestos, la liquidez, el riesgo de interés y riesgo de reinversión, el riesgo de insolvencia (rating, CDS, etc.), el riesgo de inflación, y otros riesgos que afectan al valor de los bonos.English Abstract: This monograph shows the main characteristics of the fixed income financial assets: yield, price, time, coupon rate, anticipated rescue, convertibles (CoCos included), taxes, interest and reinvestment risks, default risk (rating, CDS, etc), inflation risk, and other kinds of risk.

We examine whether ownership and governance characteristics are associated with the firm’s operating performance and stock price. We hypothesize that while ownership structure and governance mechanisms impact the firm's operating performance, they can also impact stakeholders’ abilities to expropriate rents from other stakeholders. We use a two-step estimation approach to assess whether the benefit of a better governance system manifest itself as higher operating performance or a premium on share price. To mitigate potential problems from using conventional accounting performance measures, we use Ohlson’s (1995) expected residual income (ERI) valuation metric which incorporates the expected operating performance of the firm. Results suggest that (1) higher share ownership of the CEO, corporate insiders, and outside directors has a strong positive association with both firm performance (measured by the ERI metric) and market value; (2) large ownership of outside shareholders has a negative association with the firm’s operating performance; (3) presence of a controlling shareholder is negatively related to market value; (4) after controlling for ownership, there is no improvement in operating performance or share value from having greater representation of outside directors, or having a larger board; and (5) variables representing the CEO’s stature – the CEO’s tenure and the board chairmanship – have a negative association with operating performance or market value.

This paper examines the relative importance of six factors in the capital structure decisions of publicly traded Indian firms. Existing empirical research on capital structure has been largely confined to developed countries. The papers related to emerging economies usually group several countries together. The Indian Financial Market has been developing at an exponential rate and dedicated research in the field in required. The paper utilises a larger data set in comparison to the earlier studies on India and examines additional factors. We use over 135 firms in the period of 1990-2009 listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (aka as Mumbai Stock Exchange). The objective of this paper is to build on previous studies on the Indian capital market and model all the important factors affecting capital structure decisions of Indian firms post liberalization policy by Govt of India. I find that factors such as tangibility of assets, growth, firm size, business risk, liquidity, and profitability have significant influences on the leverage structure chosen by firms in the Indian context.