The Cross-Sectional Variation of Skewness Risk Premia

This paper estimates skewness risk premia on individual stocks using synthetic skew swaps and shows that there is a considerably large variation of monthly realized skewness risk premia across a representative set of portfolios which are sorted by skewness risk premium payoffs in the prior period. It then focuses on investigating the determinants of such cross-sectional variation and documents that consumption risk does not seem to be priced with respect to skewness risk premia. The market excess return and, especially, the market variance risk premium are shown to be key risk factors that drive the cross-sectional variation of skewness risk premium payoffs. The market variance risk premium factor is significantly priced with respect to skewness risk premia even if I allow for potential model misspecification. The success of the market variance risk premium factor can be potentially explained by the very different risk exposures of skewness risk premium-based portfolios to the risk proxied by the market variance risk premium. I further show that the higher the exposure of the skewness risk premium-based portfolio to such a risk, the larger skewness risk premium payoff is required in the cross section