infonet-economy

How does divided government affect the probability of economic policy change, and thus policy risk on financial markets? In contrast to the standard balancing model we argue that divided government, i.e., partisan conflict between the executive and the legislative branches, negatively affects the possibility of economic policy change. Using a simple spatial model we demonstrate that...

Lechner and Miquel (2001) approached the causal analysis of sequences of interventions from a potential outcome perspective based on selection on observable type of assumptions (sequential conditional independence assumptions). Lechner (2004) proposed matching estimators for this framework. However, many practical issues that might have substantial consequences for interpretation of...

This paper estimates the effect of experiencing the onset of an adverse health condition on the retirement decision of European workers. Conditional on institutional characteristics (country and individual dependent) and a selection of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the individual, we are able to net out the effect of health conditions that occur before the decision...

Capacity issues based on large inflows in well-performing hedge funds are among the most frequently discussed concerns in the hedge fund industry. In this article the impact of asset flows and fund sizes on hedge fund and CTA performance is investigated. The findings confirm the legitimacy of investor concerns regarding capacity issues in the hedge fund industry. The results of the...

The four risk factors controlling for the market, size, value, and momentum effect have become a state-of-the-art framework for various applications in financial markets research. However, previous work shows that these broadly recognized risk factors are country-specific. For these reasons, this paper develops and analyses these factors for the Swiss stock market from January 1990...

Wie viele andere Branchen spürt auch die Versicherungsbranche die Auswirkungen des er-höhten Wettbewerbs. Es erstaunt deshalb wenig, dass viele Versicherungen zurzeit die Opti-mierung der internen Wertschöpfung und Prozesse als wichtigste strategische Herausforde-rung betrachten. Vor diesem Hintergrund wurde vom Institut für Versicherungswirtschaft der Universität St. Gallen (I.VW-...