It is now well established that the volatility of asset returns is time varying and highly persistent. One leading model that is used to represent these features of the data is the stochastic volatility model. The researcher may test for non-stationarity of the volatility process by testing for a unit root in the log-squared time series. This strategy for inference has many advantages, but is n...

After the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007, severe fire sales of assets in the financial sector are accompanied by a rise in the volatility of asset returns in the non-financial firms. To account for their co-movements, I develop a model that highlights the interaction between the financial health of the banking sector and the volatility of asset returns. The novel feature of the model is...

We establish several new findings on the relation between open interest in commodity markets and asset returns. High commodity market activity, as measured by high open-interest growth, predicts high commodity returns and low bond returns. Openinterest growth is a more powerful and robust predictor of commodity returns than other known predictors such as the short rate, the yield spread, the ba...

BACKGROUND Universal health coverage is high on national health agendas of many countries at the moment. Absence of financial hardship is a key component of universal health coverage and should be monitored regularly. However, relevant household survey data, which is traditionally needed for this analysis is not frequently collected in most countries and in some countries, has not been collecte...

Threats to information security are proliferating rapidly, placing demanding requirements on protecting tangible and intangible business and individual assets. Biometrics can improve security by replacing or complementing traditional security technologies. This tutorial discusses the strengths and weaknesses of biometrics and traditional security approaches, current and future applications of b...

Although established money managers operate in an environment which seems competitive, they also seem to be very profitable. The present value of the expected future profits from managing a collection of funds is equal to the value of the assets under management times the profit margin, assuming that the managed funds will remain in business forever, zero asset flow into and out of the funds, z...

This paper presents an empirical investigation of the consolidation process among banking organizations over the past 40 years. As merger announcements in the news make clear, consolidation is a continuing saga. While consolidation has been the dominant characteristic of the banking industry for decades, tests show that consolidation has not been a stable process. These tests indicate that nine...

We analyze the problem of an investor who needs to unwind a portfolio in the face of recurring and uncertain liquidity needs, with a model that accounts for both permanent and temporary price impact of trading. We first show that a risk-neutral investor who myopically deleverages his position to meet an immediate need for cash always prefers to sell more liquid assets. If the investor faces the...