The research investigates the application of asset allocation model to pension structure and mortgage payment. The defined contribution pension plan has become the main pension plan in Taiwan. In this pension plan, labors could adjust the contribution rate to maximize their utility function even if they change jobs. Thus, the pension plan may cause changes in their optimal asset allocation. In addition, due to the financial innovations of personalized debt instruments, lenders are allowed to adjust the mortgage payment to maximize personal utility function and hence the adjustable payment ratio could also change the lenders¡¦ optimal asset allocation. This study presents an extended intertemporal asset allocation model of Campbell(1993) and Viceira(2001) to investigate the effects of defined contribution pension and mortgage payment. The numeric simulation is also present to demonstrate the effects on labors¡¦ optimal asset allocation.

Because the government changed laws and opened the market progressively in recent years, the financial market in Taiwan becomes more and more liberal and international; every investor has to face a more complicated investitive environment. They can choice many investitive objects and tools, but how to choice the best one is a big problem for them and the risk in the financial market becomes much higher. Mutual fund is a popular investment tools in recent year. One of the mutual fund¡¦s benefits is the diversity of investment and effectively disperses risk.. In August 2006, the government in Taiwan opens up the market of mutual fund; the investors can buy offshore mutual funds in many channels, so they can choice many kinds of mutual funds, about 1,400 in April 2008. Also, every investor that can beat the level of risk is so different, it maybe make them confused and really want to know which one is much better and do asset allocation very well. Therefore, how to design a good portfolio for different perceived risk levels of investors is a worthful topic in the academia and the really world. This research uses the genetic algorithm to construct mutual fund portfolios based on perceived risk levels, use fund return, standard deviation, Alpha, Beta, Sharpe, IR and Sortino indicators to select funds of a portfolio and calculate portfolio return and standard deviation, then do asset allocation. This research change funds in every portfolio every month using Sliding Windows method from Jan 1, 2001 to Dec 12, 2007, totally 84 times. The result of this research is every portfolio average return wins benchmark index average return. The standard deviation of every portfolio also wins benchmark index standard deviation. It shows this research can beat benchmark index effectively and also can decrease the risk of portfolio return, then we can get a good fund portfolio for different perceived risk levels of investors

The work presented in this dissertation can be grouped around two major themes. The first theme relates to the asset allocation and the second theme relates to risk management. In Chapter Three, we investigate the dynamics of foreign exchange and stock returns based on an extended version of Sentana and Wadhwani (1992) model. This study is mainly driven by the wish to explain two major stylized facts that puzzled the older models. We find evidence to support that only intertemporal variation in the foreign exchange risk premium can be explained by time¡Vvarying covariance priced risk factors. Furthermore, we also find that the first order autocorrelation of both foreign exchange and stock market returns in Taiwan is negatively related to the level of conditional volatility and covariance. This time-varying nature of the serial correlation pattern is consistent with our model where some traders follow feedback strategies. The three nested asset pricing models with four models of conditional second moments are strongly rejected. We conclude that our extended Sentana and Wadhwani model is more adequate in explaining the dynamics of foreign exchange and stock markets. In Chapter Four, we investigate the risk management of futures market and spot market returns. There is widespread evidence that the volatility of stock returns display an asymmetric response to good and bad news. This paper attempted and found the asymmetric behavior co-existence in spot as well as future markets. By using the Asymmetric Dynamic Model (ADC) proposed by Kroner and Ng (1998), we estimated the conditional covariance matrix asymmetric and calculated dynamic optimal hedge ratios. With the help of that asymmetric model, our ¡§out of sample¡¨ dynamic hedging strategy out-performed that of normally dynamic hedging strategies. However, while taking the transaction costs into consideration, the performance was even worse than that of the static strategy.

published_or_final_version / Statistics and Actuarial Science / Master / Master of Philosophy

This dissertation consists of two essays in asset allocation. In the first essay, I measure the value of active money management. I explore this issue by comprehensively examining the parametric rule proposed by Brandt, Santa-Clara and Valkanov (2009) (the BSV rule) out-of-sample for portfolio selection among 3516 stocks in CRSP and comparing this rule to the mean-variance (MV) rule and the naïve 1/N rule recently advocated by DeMiguel, Garlappi and Uppal (2009). The BSV rule outperforms both the MV and 1/N rules and the outperformance is robust to investment horizons and stock market states. The BSV rule is effective for investors with different preferences or investment opportunities. The effectiveness of the BSV rule is robust to data screening criteria, estimation periods, portfolio performance evaluation models, the business cycle, and stock market states. In the second essay, I explore the question of whether macroeconomic state variables are able to predict cross-sectional stock returns from the perspective of asset allocation. I find that conditioning on macroeconomic state variables leads to optimal portfolios with a Carhart alpha that is 125 basis points per month higher than unconditional optimal portfolios out-of-sample. Unfortunately, conditioning on macroeconomic states is subject to an "overfitting" problem and can lead investors to experience unexpected huge losses. My results suggest that macroeconomic state variables mare able to predict cross-sectional stock returns but risk-averse investors need to combine other funds (e.g. market portfolio) to take advantage of this predictability.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed August 7, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. David R. Peterson, Florida State University, College of Business, Dept. of Finance. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 27, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-91).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

M.Sc. (Statistics) / Most people in the world rely on a well-functioning and stable financial system. Problems experienced by financial institutions, such as too little liquidity or large amounts of bad debt, can easily influence companies and individuals, creating a chain reaction comparable to an avalanche. Financial institutions are faced with a very difficult constrained optimization problem - generating as much profit as possible while staying in business by limiting the amount of risk taken.