After the financialization of commodity futures markets in 2004-05 oil volatility has become a strong predictor of returns and volatility of the overall stock market. Furthermore, stocks' exposure to oil volatility risk now drives the cross-section of expected returns. The difference in average...

The GARCH framework has been used for option pricing with quite some success. While the initial work assumed conditional Gaussian innovations, recent contributions relax this assumption and allow for more flexible parametric specifications of the underlying distribution. However, until now the...

In this paper we propose a feasible way to price American options in a model with time varying volatility and conditional skewness and leptokurtosis using GARCH processes and the Normal Inverse Gaussian distribution. We show how the risk neutral dynamics can be obtained in this model, we...

In recent years multivariate models for asset returns have received much attention, in particular this is the case for models with time varying volatility. In this paper we consider models of this class and examine their potential when it comes to option pricing. Specifically, we derive the risk...

While stochastic volatility models improve on the option pricing error when compared to the Black-Scholes-Merton model, mispricings remain. This paper uses mixed normal heteroskedasticity models to price options. Our model allows for significant negative skewness and time varying higher order...

Illiquidity is well-known to be a significant determinant of stock and bond returns. We report on illiquidity premia in the equity options market. An increase in option illiquidity decreases the current option price and implies higher expected option returns. This effect is statistically and...

Illiquidity is well-known to be a signi?cant determinant of stock and bond returns. We report on illiquidity premia in equity option markets. An increase in option illiquidity decreases the current option price and predicts higher expected option returns. This effect is statistically and...

This paper finds empirical support for the habit persistence model of Camp- bell and Cochrane (1999) along both cross sectional and time-series dimensions of the US stock market. GMM estimations show that the model is able to explain a substantial part of the cross sectional variation of returns...

We suggest an iterated GMM approach to estimate and test the consumption based habit persistence model of Campbell and Cochrane (1999), and we apply the approach on annual and quarterly Danish stock and bond returns. For comparative purposes we also estimate and test the standard CRRA model. In...

By using a beginning-of-period timing convention for consumption, and by including the Great Depression years in the analysis, we show that on annual data from 1926 to 2009 a standard contemporaneous consumption risk model goes a long way in explaining the size and value premiums in...