The transition from conventional power sources to renewable energy sources is taking place in a number of European countries. Electric energy storage has been proposed as an environmentally friendly solution to make this transition possible. This thesis analyzes the profitability of investing in a battery bank in Germany and the UK, using a real options model. The model determines the option va...

PART TWO: THE CORE-SATELLITE MODEL A recent note discussed a potential solution to excessive hedge fund fees, the Investor Aggregation Model, but highlighted near term obstacles, including industry structure and agency issues. This note discusses a more realistic alternative: a Core-Satellite Model that builds on the experience of the traditional asset management industry and recent development...

We consider the utility maximization problem for an investor who faces a solvency or risk constraint in addition to a budget constraint. The investor wishes to maximize her expected utility from terminal wealth subject to a bound on her expected solvency at maturity. We measure solvency using a solvency function applied to the terminal wealth. The motivation for our analysis is an optimal inves...

Modern asset pricing theory generally assumes frictionless trading. Under this assumption, an investor would revise his portfolio holdings at every date on which he could trade. However, in models where an investor faces financial market frictions such as transactions costs, the portfolio is optimally rebalanced less frequently. This paper examines the portfolio trading problem for an investor ...

This paper analyzes optimal non-linear portfolio management contracts. We consider a setting where the investor faces moral hazard with respect to the effort and risk choices of the portfolio manager. The manager’s employment contract promises her: (a) a fixed payment, (b) a proportional asset-based fee, (c) a benchmark-linked fulcrum fee, and (d) a benchmark-linked option-type “bonus” incentiv...

This paper studies the strategic interaction between a foreign direct investor and a host country. We analyze how the investor can use his control rights to protect his investment if he faces the risk of “creeping expropriation” once his investment is sunk. It is shown that this hold-up problem may cause underinvestment if the bargaining position of the investor is too weak and overinvestment i...

In this paper we examine the influence of minority expropriation on disclosure level in France where shareholders are poorly protected and the main agency problem is the one between controlling and minority shareholders (type II conflict) while prior studies have been undertaken in the United States, in a context of ownership dispersion and high investor protection where the main agency conflic...

This paper examines the problem of choosing the optimal portfolio for an investor with asymmetric attitude to gains and losses described in the prospect theory of A. Tversky and D. Kahneman. We consider the portfolio optimization problem for an investor who follows the assumptions of the prospect theory and the cumulative prospect theory under conditions on the stochastic behavior both of the p...