Scaled and stable mean-variance-EVaR portfolio selection strategy with proportional transaction costs

This paper studies a portfolio optimization problem with variance and Entropic Value-at-Risk (evar) as risk measures. As the variance measures the deviation around the expected return, the introduction of evar in the mean-variance framework helps to control the downside risk of portfolio returns. This study utilized the squared l2-norm to alleviate estimation risk problems arising from the mean estimate of random returns. To adequately represent the variance-evar risk measure of the resulting portfolio, this study pursues rescaling by the capital accessible after payment of transaction costs. The results of this paper extend the classical Markowitz model to the case of proportional transaction costs and enhance the efficiency of portfolio selection by alleviating estimation risk and controlling the downside risk of portfolio returns. The model seeks to meet the requirements of regulators and fund managers as it represents a balance between short tails and variance. The practical implications of the findings of this study are that the model when applied, will increase the amount of capital for investment, lower transaction cost and minimize risk associated with the deviation around the expected return at the expense of a small additional risk in short tails

External financing of US corporations: Are loans and securities complements or substitutes?

“Multiple avenues of intermediation” (Greenspan 2000) suggest substitutability of corporate loan and bond finance which smooths external financing flows. Holmstrom and Tirole (1997) stress complementarity; for most firms bank finance and consequent monitoring is essential for bond finance. Econometric work based on their model is consistent with complementarity both on average over time and during financial crises, and for levels and volatilities. It implies that “multiple avenues” may not be effective as a buffer in a bank credit crunch, and hence supply-side blockages of bank credit may impact on real activity. There are important implications for regulation, not least Basel II

Bayesian efficiency analysis with a flexible form: The aim cost function

Sampling;Bayesian Statistics

European Securitisation : a GARCH model of CDO, MBS and Pfandbrief spreads

Asset-backed securitisation (ABS) is an asset funding technique that involves the issuance of structured claims on the cash flow performance of a designated pool of underlying receivables. Efficient risk management and asset allocation in this growing segment of fixed income markets requires both investors and issuers to thoroughly understand the longitudinal properties of spread prices. We present a multi-factor GARCH process in order to model the heteroskedasticity of secondary market spreads for valuation and forecasting purposes. In particular, accounting for the variance of errors is instrumental in deriving more accurate estimators of time-varying forecast confidence intervals. On the basis of CDO, MBS and Pfandbrief transactions as the most important asset classes of off-balance sheet and on-balance sheet securitisation in Europe we find that expected spread changes for these asset classes tends to be level stationary with model estimates indicating asymmetric mean reversion. Furthermore, spread volatility (conditional variance) is found to follow an asymmetric stochastic process contingent on the value of past residuals. This ABS spread behaviour implies negative investor sentiment during cyclical downturns, which is likely to escape stationary approximation the longer this market situation lasts

Option pricing with asymmetric heteroskedastic normal mixture models

This paper uses asymmetric heteroskedastic normal mixture models to fit return data and to price options. The models can be estimated straightforwardly by maximum likelihood, have high statistical fit when used on S&P 500 index return data, and allow for substantial negative skewness and time varying higher order moments of the risk neutral distribution. When forecasting out-of-sample a large set of index options between 1996 and 2009, substantial improvements are found compared to several benchmark models in terms of dollar losses and the ability to explain the smirk in implied volatilities. Overall, the dollar root mean squared error of the best performing benchmark component model is 39% larger than for the mixture model. When considering the recent financial crisis this difference increases to 69%.asymmetric heteroskadastic models, finite mixture models, option pricing, out-of- sample prediction, statistical fit