Model risk in the pricing of exotic options

The growth experimented in recent years in both the variety and volume of structured products implies that banks and other financial institutions have become increasingly exposed to model risk. In this article we focus on the model risk associated with the local volatility (LV) model and with the Variance Gamma (VG) model. The results show that the LV model performs better than the VG model in terms of its ability to match the market prices of European options. Nevertheless, both models are subject to significant pricing errors when compared with the stochastic volatility framework.

Industry concentration and market volatility

In this paper our aim is to gain a better understanding of the relationship between market volatility and industrial structure. As conflicting results have been documented regarding the relationship between market industry concentration and market volatility, this study investigates this relationship in the time series. We have found that this relationship is only significant and positive for Spain. Our results suggest that we cannot generalize across different countries that market industrial structure (concentration) is a significant factor in explaining market volatility.

The role of an illiquidity factor in the Portuguese stock market

This study examines the role of illiquidity (proxied by the proportion of zero returns) as an additional risk factor in asset pricing. We use Portuguese monthly data, covering the period between January 1988 and December 2008. We compute an illiquidity factor using the Fama and French [Fama, E. F., and K. R. French (1993), "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds", Journal of Financial Economics, Vol. 33, Nº. 1, pp. 3-56] procedure and analyze the performance of CAPM, Fama-French three-factor model and illiquidity-augmented versions of these models in explaining both the time-series and the cross-section of returns. Our results reveal that the effect of characteristic liquidity is subsumed by the models considered, but the risk of illiquidity is not priced in the Portuguese stock market.

The impact of family control on firm's return

Family firm is a field of growing interest. The aim of this article is to understand whether CEOs identity impacts family firm’s stock returns. From a sample of Portuguese and Spanish family firms findings show that who manages the firms result in significantly different risk exposure. Moreover, we find that the abnormal return found by Fahlenbrach (2009) to founder-controlled firms disappear when we use valueweighted portfolios and include two new factors: market aggregate illiquidity and debt intensity to the four-factor Carhart model. Finally, our results explain why the majority of family firm is controlled by its founder.

Idiosyncratic risk really drives stock returns; Spanish evidence

Following the theoretical model of Merton (1987), we provide a new perspective of study about the role of idiosyncratic risk in the asset pricing process. More precisely, we analyze whether the idiosyncratic risk premium depends on the idiosyncratic risk level of an asset as well as the vatriation in the market-wide measure of idiosyncratic risk. As expected, we obtain a net positive risk premium for the Spanish stock market over the period 1987-2007. Our results show a positive relation between returns and individual indiosyncratic risk levels and a negative but lower relation with the aggregate measure of idiosyncratic risk. These findings have important implications for portfolio and risk management and contribute to provide a unified and coherent answer for the main and still unsolved question about the idiosyncratic risk puzzle: whether or not there exists a premium associated to this kind of risk and the sign for this risk premium.

Volatility forecasting with range models: An evaluation of new alternatives to the CARR model

The aim of this paper is to analyze the forecasting ability of the CARR model proposed by Chou (2005) using the S&P 500. We extend the data sample, allowing for the analysis of different stock market circumstances and propose the use of various range estimators in order to analyze their forecasting performance. Our results show that there are two range-based models that outperform the forecasting ability of the GARCH model. The Parkinson model is better for upward trends and volatilities which are higher and lower than the mean while the CARR model is better for downward trends and mean volatilities.

Caracterização da actividade de gestão de projecto na área de promoção imobiliária em Portugal

Os últimos anos colocaram o mercado imobiliário na ordem do dia, com modificações sucessivas nos equilíbrios entre a oferta e a procura, suscitadas pelas alterações nas economias mundiais. Portugal acompanhou todas essas oscilações com o consequente reflexo no mercado imobiliário. Paralelamente foram produzidas alterações legislativas, que permitiram normalizar e estabelecer critérios bem definidos ao nível das garantias dos produtos imobiliários, bem como na adequação a exigências de qualidade e conforto. A Gestão de Empreendimentos Imobiliários necessitou de responder a estes novos desafios adequando-se a um conjunto de alterações que têm reflexos nos custos de produção, num ambiente competitivo, tornando-se numa actividade exigente e sofisticada, onde a prática intuitiva e pouco organizada deixou de garantir o sucesso dos projectos e a utilização de actuais técnicas de Gestão de Projectos é cada vez mais uma necessidade. Este trabalho pretende caracterizar a utilização das metodologias de Gestão de Projecto empregues pelos promotores imobiliários em Portugal durante o ciclo de vida dos seus empreendimentos. Efectua uma abordagem através de um inquérito, junto de uma amostra de promotores imobiliários, maioritariamente actuantes no sector habitacional, onde se procura a resposta aos diferentes graus de investimento que estes efectuam na preparação, planeamento e controlo de execução dos seus projectos. As respostas ao inquérito permitem obter um quadro muito rico sobre esta realidade e conduzem a um conjunto de reflexões sobre os modos de abordagem às diferentes fases do Projectos imobiliários.