We explore the pricing of variance risk by decomposing stocks' total variance into systematicand idiosyncratic return variances. While systematic variance risk exhibits a negative priceof risk, common shocks to the variances of idiosyncratic returns carry a large positive riskpremium. This...

With increasing appreciation of the fact that stock return variance is stochastic and variance risk is heavily priced, the industry has created a series of variance derivative products to span variance risk. The variance swap contract is the most actively traded of these products. It pays at...

The challenge of international term structure models is to simultaneously account for the properties of interest rate term structures and foreign exchange rates within an arbitrage-free framework. We extend the quadratic term structure models proposed in Leippold and Wu (2002) to multiple...

We develop intuitive expressions for the spread between a forwardcontract and a similar futures contract taking into account the pos-sibility of counterparty default. We evaluate these expressions nu-merically and show that the forward-futures spread is significant forrealistic parameter...

Most derivative contracts are traded over-the-counter, i.e., bilaterally between two counterparties. Recently, clearing services have become available that allow to transfer over-the-counter derivatives to a central counterparty (clearing house). We develop a framework to determine the effects...

Over the period 2002 to 2003, Switzerland and the European Union (EU) were engaged in negotiations regarding banking secrecy. The EU's stated goal was for Switzerland to abolish banking secrecy. Switzerland refused and offered to impose a withholding tax on interest income instead. The two...