Active portfolio management is driven by the trade-off between the expected return and the associated risks. In light of the most recent extensions of Black-Litterman model, we stick to a Bayesian approach for the construction of active fixed income portfolios. Within the investment grade universe, the equilibrium returns are approximated by the yield levels implied by the market prices and these are blended together with investment views. In parallel, risk factors are preferred over asset class risk modelling. Affinity towards risk factors rather than asset classes is primarily linked with two elements; the reduction of the dimensionality of the risk estimation problem and the intuitive way in which portfolio exposures per risk factor can be expressed as performance drivers. The first empirical part of the thesis deals with the optimisation of a relative to an index portfolio where the centre of gravity is the chosen benchmark. The first ingredient of the optimisation is the blend of the yield advantage over the index and the expectations for excess returns over the index emanating from the investment views. The second ingredient is the risk estimated by a multifactor risk model. Then, a set of relative to the index investment grade portfolios is constructed. The second empirical part investigates whether there is scope to blend the multifactor risk framework with more sophisticated risk estimation techniques such as resampling. Tail risk estimated by block bootstrapping on the risk exposures of real actively managed portfolio exposures vs. the Barclays Capital US Aggregate index is compared with the parametric and exponentially weighted moving average risk model findings. The multifactor risk estimate using block bootstrapping exhibits better performance than the alternatives tested but struggles to capture the out of sample extremes. Finally, the third empirical part aims to enhance the allocation model by taking advantage of the findings of the second empirical part. The blending mechanism of equilibrium returns and investment views, which are expressed as optimisation constraints, is performed with the aid of a numerically approximated returns’ distribution. The resampled distribution deviates from the normality assumption imposed initially in the Black-Litterman model and forms a more realistic basis for the evaluation of investment views and for the portfolio construction against tail risk measures such as value at risk and conditional value at risk.

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This study examines the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the effect of FDI on trade in a panel of bilateral outward FDI stocks of 19 OECD countries in Turkey between 1982 and 2007. Employing a knowledge-capital model, this study finds that joint national incomes, per capita difference, investment liberalisation and the cost of exporting to Turkey have significant effects on FDI in Turkey. In addition, the prospect of European Union membership, government stability, infrastructure, bilateral exchange rate, exchange rate volatility and openness to trade play an important role in determining the amount of FDI in Turkey. Moreover, this study finds that high relative unit labour costs and corruption provide stimuli to FDI. Using an augmented gravity model to investigate the relationship between FDI and imports, this study finds that outward FDI stocks are positively related to the exports. Overall, the empirical results indicate that FDI in Turkey is mainly motivated by market access and sensitive to the quality of institutions.

During the last two centuries the developed world experienced a persistent increase in life expectancy. Although past trends suggests that life expectancy will continue to increase, there is considerable uncertainty surrounding the future evolution of mortality. In addition, past mortality improvements have not been shared equally across the population, resulting in a widening of socio-economic inequalities in mortality. The uncertainty and socio-economic variability of life expectancy pose a challenge for the design of pension systems and the management of longevity risk in pension funds and annuity portfolios. This thesis is devoted to the investigation of the trends and financial implications of socio-economic differences in mortality. It comprises three parts. The first part introduces new modelling techniques for the quantification of socio-economic mortality differentials in aggregate and cause-specific mortality, which are applied in the study of the relationship between mortality and deprivation in the English population. The second part evaluates the suitability of several multipopulation stochastic mortality models for assessing basis risk in longevity hedges and provides guidelines on how to use these models in practical situations. Finally, the third part introduces new modelling tools which aim to permit a more effective and widespread use of stochastic mortality models.

The 2008 financial crisis had a significant impact on financial institutions. Banks have been in the limelight when some of them were liquidated and pensions funds have not been immune to the effects of the financial crisis. In the wake of the financial crisis, governments, regulators and political commentators have pointed an accusing finger at the securitization market - even in the absence of a detailed statistical and economic analysis. The eight years leading up to 2008 saw a rapid growth in the use of securitization by UK banks. We aim to identify the reasons that contributed to this rapid growth. The time period (2000 to 2010) covered by our study is noteworthy as it covers the pre-financial crisis credit boom, the peak of the financial crisis and its aftermath. We also investigate how the banks have gone about their fund-raising in support of their investment without signalling the value of the bank to the investors. This involves critical financing decisions about their main financing sources: Debt and equity issuance. We attempt to establish which decision banks have taken in the recent years. We do this by analysing financial data of banks in the US for the period 2001 to 2011. We examine how banks choose between the financing instruments available at a given time and in different financial contexts. This provides evidence regarding the difference between financing options available for investment opportunities that banks have at a given time. Thus, we show that internal finance is preferred to external finance, and that the theory regarding the impact of asymmetric information holds for banks on financing decisions as modelled by Myers and Majluf (1984). The steep drop in financial markets in 2008 coupled with the ongoing economic recession has also posed immediate challenges for pensions funds. We therefore consider how safe the pension funds are in the current period of high stock market volatility. We use the case of the Dutch pension funds since it is ranked to be the best managed pension funds in the world. The pension risk for the firms together with the market risk will give an idea of the impact of market volatility on pension asset allocation. It is expected that most firms who allocated a large percentage of their assets to equity were negatively affected by the stock market crash. Hence, pension funds are safe investing elsewhere other than in equities despite the high returns.

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The objective of this thesis is to analyse the relationship between international taxation and developing countries. The main idea is to examine this relationship through arguments that challenge the current legal debate that has described their interest as capital importers of foreign direct investment. Globalisation has changed the economic relations between developed and developing countries. The evolution of the economic aspects as well as tax policies implemented during the process of globalisation provides the background necessary to understand the increased importance of international taxation and the participation of developing countries in the global economy. The hypothesis tested here addresses the question whether the dichotomy between developing and developed countries and their characterisation as capital importers and capital exporters still provides an appropriate basis for the legal debate on international taxation in the context of globalisation. To approach this question, the behaviour of international flow of capital will be assessed in order to provide an overview of the economic relations among these countries. To perform this study, initially the meaning of globalisation and international taxation are explained in order to build up the framework of this thesis; secondly, the current debate on harmful tax competition is examined to put in evidence the problem addressed in this thesis; thirdly, an analysis of the international flow of capital is performed to identify new premises that could update the legal debate; fourthly, based on the profile of the international flow of capital, the phenomenon of capital flight is addressed. Fifthly, having in mind the difficulty in taxing capital flight, taxation of portfolio investment is examined. Based on the arguments raised, the legal debate is updated demonstrating the higher importance of double taxation over tax avoidance and evasion in the recent past. Finally, considering the increased relevance of international tax avoidance and evasion, instruments available for exchange of information are analysed, and their effectiveness to curb capital flight from developing countries.

This thesis contains three essays on delegated portfolio management and deals with issues such as impact of regulations on mutual fund performance, impact of competition on transparency in financial markets and strategic trading behaviour of agents in illiquid markets. Chapter 1 analyses the impact of more frequent portfolio disclosure on mutual funds performance. Since 2004, SEC requires all U.S. mutual funds to disclose their portfolio holdings on a quarterly basis from semi-annual previously. This change in regulation provides a natural setting to study the impact of disclosure frequency on the performance of mutual funds. Prior to the policy change, it finds that the semi-annual funds with high abnormal returns in the past year outperform the corresponding quarterly funds by 17-20 basis points a month. This difference in performance disappears after 2004. The reduction in performance is higher for semi-annual funds holding illiquid assets than those holding liquid assets. These results support the hypothesis that performance of funds with more disclosure suffers more from activities such as front running. Chapter 2 analyses the impact of competition in financial markets on incentives to re- veal information. It finds that discretionary portfolio disclosure and advertising expenses of mutual funds decrease with competition. This supports the theory that mutual funds use portfolio disclosure and advertising as marketing tools to attract new investments in a financial market, where superior relative performance and greater visibility are rewarded with convex payoffs. With higher competition, the likelihood of landing new investments goes down for each fund while the cost of disclosure goes up. Funds respond by cutting down on costly disclosures and advertising activities. Thus competition seems to have adverse impact on market transparency and search cost. 3Chapter 3 develops a model of strategic trading to study forced liquidation. Traders who hold an illiquid risky security have to satisfy minimum capital requirements, or liquidate their position. Therefore, traders with price impact can induce the fire sale of others to benefit from future low prices. It shows that if traders have similar proportions of wealth invested in the risky security, or the market is sufficiently liquid, they behave cooperatively and smooth their orders over several trading periods. However, if the proportions are significantly different across agents, and market liquidity is low, the strong agent, who is less exposed to the risky asset, predates on the weak agent, and forces her to exit the market.

The aim of the thesis is to examine the leverage and debt maturity levels and the determinants of capital structure and debt maturity of firms in developing countries. We use World Bank Enterprise Survey data covering 10,839 firms in 24 countries located in five regions. The survey provides information about balance sheet and income statements items allowing us to examine whether capital structure theory is portable to small firms in developing countries. We find that the leverage and debt maturity levels of small and large firms are different. Leverage and debt maturities are lower for small firms despite their high asset tangibility and profitability ratios. We attribute this to the economic and financial environment of the country. Small firms do not consider profitability when making external financing decisions. Firm level determinants are important for large firms regarding capital structure and debt maturity decisions. However, most of the economic and financial environment variables become insignificant. Therefore, the main difference between small and large firms is derived from the impact of the economic and financial environment of a country. Most of the economic and financial environment variables do not have statistically significant effects on the leverage and debt maturity decisions of large firms. We attribute this to large firms’ easy access to both domestic and international financial markets. Hence, if local governments provide better fiscal and monetary policies and a friendly business environment, small firms can amplify their leverage and debt maturity.

The costly lessons from global crisis in the past decade reinforce the importance as well as challenges of risk management. This thesis explores several core concepts of quantitative risk management and provides further insight. We start with rating migration risk and propose a Mixture of Markov Chains (MMC) model to account for stochastic business cycle effects in credit rating migration risk. The model shows superior in-sample estimation and out-of-sample predication than its rivals. Compared with the naive approach the economic application suggests banks with MMC estimator will increase capital requirement in economic expansion and free up capital during recession hence it is aligned with Basel III macroprudential imitative by reducing the recession-vs-expansion gap in capital buffers. Subsequently we move to the key concept of dependence by investigating the importance of dynamic linkages between credit and equity markets. We propose a flexible regime-switching copula model to explore the dynamics of dependence and possible structure breaks with special consideration on tail dependence. The study reveals a high-dependence regime that coincides with the recent financial crisis. The backtesting results acknowledge the new model's superiority on out-of-sample VaR forecasting over purely dynamic or static copula. It can serve to emphasise the relevance for risk management of appropriately modeling complex dependence structures. Finally we discuss the risk measures and how they affect the portfolio optimisation. We contend that more successful portfolio management can be achieved by combining extreme value analysis to describe downside tail risk and dynamic copulas to model nonlinear dependence structures. Conditional Value-at-Risk is adopted as pertinent measure of downside tail risk for portfolio optimisation. Using both realised portfolio returns and a set of out-of-sample Monte Carlo experiments, our novel portfolio strategy is confronted with the de facto mean-variance approach. The results suggest that the MV approach produces suboptimal portfolios or a less desirable risk-return tradeoff.