This article provides several new insights into the economic sources of skewness. First, we document the differential pricing of individual equity options versus the market index, and relate it to variations in return skewness. Second, we show how risk aversion introduces skewness in the...

We investigate whether the volatility risk premium is negative by examining the statistical properties of delta-hedged option portfolios (buy the option and hedge with stock). Within a stochastic volatility framework, we demonstrate a correspondence between the sign and magnitude of the...

How do risk-neutral return skews evolve over time and in the cross-section of individual stocks? We document the differential pricing of individual equity options versus the market index, and relate it to variations in the skew. The change-of-measure induced by marginal-utility tilting of the...

Hedge funds feature special compensation structure compared to traditional investments. Previous studies mainly focus on the provisions and incentive structure of hedge fund contract, such as 2/2'8 hurdle rates, and high-water mark. We develop an algorithm to empirically estimate the monthly...

Using data from January 18, 1996 to March 31, 2011, we construct and evaluate returns on a buy-write strategy on the Russell 2000 index. The results demonstrate that the strategy has consistently outperformed the Russell 2000 index on a risk adjusted basis, when implemented with one month to...

Since the early 2000s liquidity in option markets has become less resilient, and our evidence suggests that it is so because of an increased vulnerability to liquidity shocks in the underlying. To demonstrate the causal impact, we consider an incident in which a large broker dealer erroneously...

Using a comprehensive and unique data set from Moody's, we examine correlations between default risk for over 7,000 U.S. public firms. This is the first paper to empirically document the correlation structure both in the time-series and in the cross-section across almost all U.S. non-financial...

We develop, and apply to data on U.S. corporations from 1979-2004, tests of the standard doubly-stochastic assumption under which firms'default times are correlated only as implied by the correlation of factors determining their default intensities. This assumption is violated in the presence of...

Using data from January 18, 1996 to November 16, 2006, we construct and evaluate returns on a buy-write strategy on the Russell 2000 index. The results demonstrate that the strategy has consistently outperformed the Russell 2000 index on a risk adjusted basis, when implemented with one month to...