From the model of Hobijn and Jovanovic (2001), we modelize a technological shock with uncertainty. We assume that this technological shock appears in the shape of new firms. Only a part of these firms will be productive. Uncertainty relates to the identification of the viable firms. This...

This paper is a contribution to the vast literature on the inefficiency in the index options markets. Previous research has found that trading based on implied volatility forecasts do not generate positive profits for the S&P 500 index options but GARCH volatility forecasts do. Trading based on...

Net-worth covenants, as introduced by Black and Cox (1976), provide the firm’s bondholders with the right to force reorganization or liquidation if the value of the firm falls below a certain threshold. In the event of default, however, many bankruptcy codes stipulate an automatic stay of...

We examine whether two commonly used indicators of bank fragility, the subordinated debt spread and KMV’s distance to default, yield signals in line with supervisors’ interests. We argue that supervisors would prefer indicators that are strictly increasing in earnings, and decreasing in...

As a reaction to the general suspicion that margin loans had been a key element of the stock market boom and crash of the late 1920s, the Federal Reserve Bank was empowered to regulate margin lending with the Securities and Exchange Act. The efficacy of the Federal Reserve's margin policy has...

In this paper we study asset prices in a parsimonious two-agent macroeconomic model with two key features: limited participation in the stock market and heterogeneity in the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption. The parameter values for the model are taken from the business...

This paper examines a decision-making problem of rational agents with risk averse utilities in the financial market both in statics and in dynamics. In the financial market there are two securities, one risky security and one riskless bond, and a continuum of investors with heterogeneous...

It is a well known fact that local scale invariance plays a fundamental role in the theory of derivative pricing. Specific applications of this principle have been used quite often under the name of `change of numeraire', but in recent work it was shown that when invoked as a fundamental first...

Static time series models usually assume stationarity, normality, and independence for the increments of financial rates of return. This paper investigates the empirical characteristics of financial rates of return from Latin American stock and currency markets and documents that their empirical...

We show how payoff spaces can be used to study minimum-variance unbiased estimators and give a proof of Barankin's theorem for finite sample spaces and for samples of size one.