In this paper, I study risk-neutral probability densities regarding future Libor rates denominated in British pounds, euros, and US dollars as implied by option prices. I apply Breeden and Litzenberger's (1978) result regarding the relationship between option prices and implied probabilities for...

The paper concerns an issue of existence of a risk premium in equity and index futures markets. The paper consists of four parts. The first part describes the basic hypotheses of forward curves in the futures market. In the second section, I formulate 5 hypotheses concerning a risk premium in...

We introduce the class of linear-rational term structure models in which the state price density is modeled such that bond prices become linear-rational functions of the factors. This class is highly tractable with several distinct advantages: i) ensures nonnegative interest rates, ii) easily...

Supported by empirical examples, this paper provides a theoretical analysis on the impacts of using a suboptimal information set for the estimation of the empirical pricing kernel and, more in general, for the validity of the fundamental theorems of asset pricing. While inferring the...

In a tractable stochastic volatility model, we identify the price of the smile as the price of the unspanned risks traded in SPX option markets. The price of the smile reflects two persistent volatility and skewness risks, which imply a downward sloping term structure of low-frequency variance...

We develop a novel contract design, the fed funds futures (FFF) variance futures, which reflects the expected realized basis point variance of an underlying FFF rate. The valuation of short-term FFF variance futures is completely model-independent in a general setting that includes the cases...

We develop a conditional capital asset pricing model in continuous-time that allows for stochastic beta exposure. When beta co-moves with market variance and the stochastic discount factor (SDF), beta risk is priced, and the expected return on a stock deviates from the security market line. The...

This paper provides extensions to existing procedures for representing one-factor no-arbitrage models of the short rate in the form of a tree. It allows a wide range of drift functions for the short rate to be used in conjunction with a wide range of volatility assumptions. It shows that, if the...

This paper uses high frequency data to detect shifts in financial markets' perception of the Federal Reserve stance on inflation. We construct daily revisions to expectations of future nominal interest rates and inflation that are priced into nominal and inflation-protected bonds, and find that...