The VIX, the stock market option-based implied volatility, strongly co-moves with measures of the monetary policy stance. When decomposing the VIX into two components, a proxy for risk aversion and expected stock market volatility ("uncertainty"), we find that a lax monetary policy decreases...

This paper investigates the statistical properties of high frequency nominal exchange rates and forward premiums in the context of a dynamic two-country general equilibrium model. Primary focus is on the persistence, variability, leptokurtosis and conditional heteroskedasticity of exchange rates...

The hypothesis that the forward rate is an unbiased predictor of the future spot rate has been consistently rejected in recent empirical studies. This paper examines several sources of measurement error and misspecification that might induce biases in such studies. Although previous inferences...

The equity variance risk premium is the expected compensation earned for selling variance risk in equity markets. The variance risk premium is positive and shows moderate persistence. High variance risk premiums coincide with the left tail of the consumption growth distribution shifting down....

We identify the relative importance of changes in the conditional variance of fundamentals (which we call "uncertainty") and changes in risk aversion ("risk" for short) in the determination of the term structure, equity prices and risk premiums. Theoretically, we introduce persistent...

We decompose the squared VIX index, derived from US S&P500 options prices, into the conditional variance of stock returns and the equity variance premium. The latter is increasing in risk aversion in a wide variety of economic settings. We tackle several measurement issues assessing a plethora...