We develop statistical methods to detect informed trading in options markets. We apply these methods to 31 companies from various sectors over 14 years analyzing approximately 9.6 million option prices. We find that option informed trading tends to cluster prior to certain events, takes place...

This appendix extends the empirical results in Chesney, Crameri, and Mancini (2011). Informed trading activities on put and call options are analyzed for 19 companies in the banking and insurance sectors from January 1996 to September 2009. Our empirical findings suggest that certain events such...

Repo markets trade off the efficient allocation of liquidity in the financial sector with resilience to funding shocks. The repo trading and clearing mechanisms are crucial determinants of the allocation-resilience tradeoff. The two common mechanisms, anonymous central-counterparty (CCP) and...

Market design matters when heterogeneous borrowers roll over loans, facing funding shocks. Borrower anonymity is a key feature of various financial markets, such as short term, interbank lending markets. We show that anonymous markets experience systemic runs for large shocks, but provide...

Using a novel and comprehensive dataset, we provide the first systematic study of liquidity in the foreign exchange (FX) market. Contrary to common perceptions, we find significant variation in liquidity across exchange rates, substantial costs due to FX illiquidity, and strong commonality in...

We combine two approaches to the pricing kernel, one empirical and one theoretical, which relax the restriction that the objective return distribution and risk neutral distribution share the same volatility and higher order moments. The empirical approach provides estimates for the evolution of...

Extensions of expected utility theory are sensitive to the tail behavior of the portfolio return distribution and may not be approximated reliably through higher-order moment expansions. We develop a novel approach for model risk assessment based on a projection method and apply it to portfolio...

We develop a novel class of time-changed Lévy models which are tractable and readily applicable, capture the leverage effect, and exhibit pure jump processes with finite or infinite activity. Our models feature four nested processes reflecting market, volatility and jump risks, and observation...

We study the term structure of variance swaps, equity and variance risk premia. A model-free analysis reveals a significant price jump component in variance swap rates. A model-based analysis shows that investors' willingness to ensure against volatility risk increases after a market drop. This...