Empirical results based on two different statistical approaches lead to several conclusions about the role of time-varying asset risk assessments in accounting for what, on the basis of many earlier studies, appear to be time-varying differentials in ex ante asset returns. First, both methods indicate sizeable changes over time in variance-covariance structures conditional on past information. These changing conditional variance-covariance structures in turn imply sizeable changes over time in asset demand behavior, and hence in the market-clearing equilibrium structure of ex ante asset returns. Second, at least for some values of the parameter indicating how rapidly investors discount the information contained in past observations, the implied ex ante excess returns bear non-negligible correlation to observed ex post excess returns on either debt or equity. The percentage of the variation of ex post excess returns explained by the implied time-varying ex ante excess returns is comparable to values to which previous researchers have interpreted as warranting rejection of the hypothesis that risk premia are constant over time. Third, although for long-term debt the two statistical methods used here give sharply different answers to the question of how much relevance market participants associate with past observations in assessing future risks, for equities both methods agree in indicating extremely rapid discounting of more distant observations -- so much so that in neither case do outcomes more than a year in the past matter much at all. While the paper's other conclusions are plausible enough, the finding of such an extremely short "memory" on the part of equity investors suggests that the standard representation of equity risk by a single normally distributed disturbance is overly restrictive

If risk aversion and willingness to take on risk are driven by emotions and we as humans are bad at correctly identifying them, the finance profession has a serious challenge at hand—how to reliably identify the individual risk profile of a retail investor or high-net-worth individual. In this series of CFA Institute Research Foundation briefs, we have asked academics and practitioners to summarize the current state of knowledge about risk profiling in different key areas.

In this paper, we provide an overview of the concerns surrounding the variations in the calculation of risk-weighted assets (RWAs) across banks and jurisdictions and how this might undermine the Basel III capital adequacy framework. We discuss the key drivers behind the differences in these calculations, drawing upon a sample of systemically important banks from Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. We then discuss a range of policy options that could be explored to fix the actual and perceived problems with RWAs, and improve the use of risk-sensitive capital ratios.

Financial Markets and the Real Economy reviews the current academic literature on the macroeconomics of finance.

This content provides financial analysts, investment professionals, and financial planners with a review of how financial risk-tolerance tests can and should be evaluated. It begins by clarifying terms related to risk taking and is followed by a broad overview of two important measurement terms: validity and reliability. It concludes with examples for practice.

In this second collection of his writings on financial markets (the first, On Exchange Rates, covered international finance), Jeffrey Frankel turns his attention to domestic markets, with special attention to how national monetary policy is handled. The decade of the 1980s left many central bankers disillusioned with monetarism, so that the question of the optimal nominal anchor remains an open one. In this second collection of his writings on financial markets (the first, On Exchange Rates, covered international finance), Jeffrey Frankel turns his attention to domestic markets, with special attention to how national monetary policy is handled. The fifteen papers are divided into three sections, each introduced by the author. They cover, respectively, optimal portfolio diversification, indicators of expected inflation, and the determination of monetary policy in the face of uncertainty. In the first section, Frankel explores what information the theory of optimal portfolio diversification can give the macroeconomist. In the second section, he considers what economic variables central bankers might use to gauge whether monetary policy is too tight or too loose. And in the final section, he looks at the range of uncertainty over policy effects and how that complicates coordination of macroeconomic policymaking. The book concludes with a sympathetic analysis of nominal GDP targeting.