G11 - Portfolio Choice; Investment DecisionsReturn

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is a brand-new disruptive procedure that encourages the use of blockchain technology for developing and distributing a variety of financial goods and services. This study investigates the time-varying and asymmetric interplay between DeFi and CEE stock returns, concentrated around the COVID-19 outbreak and the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. While the associations between other cryptocurrencies and conventional assets have been studied, DeFi assets have not. For this purpose, we employ the multivariate DECO-GARCH model and cross-quantilogram framework. The results reveal a positive equicorrelation between DeFi and CEE stock market returns. Notably, the influence of DeFi on CEE stock markets is greater during the COVID-19 outbreak and the Russo-Ukrainian conflict than in the other periods. Furthermore, the cross-quantilogram estimations uncover that CEE stock markets depend less on the DeFi market at longer lag lengths. This means that the diversification benefits of DeFi against CEE stock market returns are more important for long-run investment horizons. In general, our research offers a new understanding of dependence structures, which might help investors make better investment decisions and direct their trading strategies.

Green bonds have gained prominence on China's capital market as tools that help to fuel the transition to a climate-resilient economy. Although the issuance volume on the Chinese green bond market has been growing rapidly in recent years, the impact of the green label on bond pricing has not been studied adequately. Therefore, this paper investigates whether this newly developed financial instrument offers investors in China an attractive yield compared to other equivalent conventional bonds. By matching green bonds with their conventional counterparts and subsequently applying a fixed-effects estimation, our empirical results reveal a significant green bond yield premium of 1.8 basis points (bps) on average on the Chinese secondary market. As compared to Climate Bond Initiative (CBI) certified green bonds, we find that investors are more willing to accept lower yields (pay higher prices) to include People's Bank of China (PBOC) certified green bonds into their portfolio management. Thus, we argue that Chinese green investors prefer PBOC certified green bond over CBI certified green bonds on the Chinese market. Driven by pro- environmental preference, investors are also found to be willing to pay a higher price for green bonds issued by environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance-rated issuers. Our results point to some practical implications for investors and policymakers.

This study identifies systemic break points in a factor pricing model for firms traded on European stock markets around the financial crisis. The aim is to shed light on the systemic risk transfer in explaining average stock returns in the fragmented European exchanges. Our analysis takes advantage of recent development in econometrics and employs models which enable "automatic" detection of factor model break points. We find that Western European exchanges are more closely integrated with American financial markets than Northern European stock exchanges and those in the United Kingdom. However, all exchanges were eventually affected by the systemic shock. The results of this study provide insight into immunisation strategies for portfolios created from European stocks.

We have tested the stability of parameters loading the asymmetric behaviour of the correlation and the importance of this behavior on the portfolio selection. In this paper, we have analyzed the following time series S&P index, gold and CME 5-Year Treasury Note Futures during the most important crisis from 1992 to 2009. The methodology is based on the dynamic conditional correlation model and its asymmetric volatility and asymmetric correlation extensions. The stability of parameters was tested by t-test applied on the rol ling windows data. The information importance of asymmetric volatility and correlation was tested by global minimum variance portfolio. The results suggest that the parameters loading the asymmetric behavior of the correlation are not stable for the analyzed time series during the financial crisis. With one exception we have found out that global minimum variance portfolio based on the dynamic conditional correlation model with asymmetric volatility is significantly less volatile than the global minimum variance portfolio based on the asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation model.

The idea of a positive relation between the real economy and share markets used to be supported by long-term analyses during the 20th century. As a result, the share market was supposed to be a "mirror" of the economy. The share markets tended to outrun the GDP development by a couple of quarters. On the other hand some researchers keep on pointing at some anomalies in the relation between share markets and the real economy in the short-term to midd-term time horizon in some countries. This problem was fully to see over the first decade of the 21st century that was typical for the changes in the structure of the global economy as well as for the increasing frequency of share market bubbles without an adequate economic growth. The aim of this paper is to show a new perspective on the relation between the share market and the real economy and to seek the reasons of their often contradictory development.

The purpose of this paper is to create a financial fragility model for the Czech financial sector. We adapt the Goodhart-Tsomocos model which is based on general equilibrium with incomplete markets, money and default. The calibration of the model is based on publicly available data from the period 2003-2011. Finally, we perform comparative statics to show how the key variables of the model respond to possible events. The model can be used by government institutions to stress-test the banking sector, as well as by banking and other financial institutions to estimate the development of, inter alia, the default rates of their clients. The model also incorporates default of households and may be used, after further extension, in predicting households' default rates with respect to the behaviour of banks in consequence of changes in macroeconomic parameters of the environment.

The dramatically growing disproportion between the value of corporate assets and market valuation has resulted in a well-researched schism between strategic management and financial theory. Options theory provides a potent tool to resolve this issue. We propose a model which is consistent with both the Resource- and Contractual-Based Theories of the Firm and which demonstrates that corporate strategy can be perceived as a portfolio of embedded and real options. We further argue that embedded options typically serve as hedging instruments for real options which enhances their value and should be a major consideration when assessing the structure and form of contracts. Special emphasis is granted to human capital and the contractual arrangements through which firms purchase its product. Human capital is the key resource for the processes of real-options discovery and strategy-setting, both of which constitute the essential part of a modern firm's value.