Extreme Asymmetric Volatility, Leverage, Feedback and Asset Prices

Asymmetric volatility in equity markets has been widely documented in finance, where two competing explanations, as considered in Bekaert and Wu (2000), are the financial leverage and the volatility feedback hypothesis. We explicitly test for the role of both hypotheses in explaining extreme daily U.S. equity market movements during the period January 1990 to September 2008. To this aim, we examine asymmetric volatility based on a novel model of market returns, conditional market volatility and volatility of volatility. We then test for extreme asymmetry and the distinct predictions of both hypotheses. Our results document significant extreme asymmetric volatility. This effect is contemporaneous, consistent with both hypotheses, and it is important for large market declines. We further point out aggregate asset pricing implications under extreme volatility feedback.