"This paper studies strategic asset allocation and consumption choice in the presence of regime switching in asset returns. We find evidence that four separate regimes - characterized as crash, slow growth, bull and recovery states - are required to capture the joint distribution of stock and...

"We analyze the volatility surface vs. moneyness and time to expiration implied by MIBO options written on the MIB30, the most important Italian stock index. We specify and fit a number of models of the implied volatility surface and find that it has a rich and interesting structure that...

"One key stylized fact in the empirical option pricing literature is the existence of an implied volatility surface (IVS). The usual approach consists of fitting a linear model linking the implied volatility to the time to maturity and the moneyness, for each cross section of options data....

"This paper proposes a new tractable approach to solving multi-period asset allocation problems. We assume that investor preferences are defined over moments of the terminal wealth distribution such as its skew and kurtosis. Time-variations in investment opportunities are driven by a regime...