We document that leverage-adjusted returns on S&P 500 index call and put portfolios are decreasing in their strike-to-price ratio over 1986-2010, contrary to the prediction of the Black-Scholes-Merton model. We test a large number of plausible unconditional factor models and find that only...

We document that the skew of S&P500 index puts is non-decreasing in the disaster index and risk-neutral variance, contrary to the implications of no-arbitrage models. Our model resolves the puzzle by recognizing that, as the disaster risk increases, customers demand more puts as insurance while...

American options on the Samp;P 500 index futures that violate the stochastic dominance bounds of Constantinides and Perrakis (2007) from 1983 to 2006 are identified as potentially profitable trades. Call bid prices more frequently violate their upper bound than put bid prices do, while...

A novel methodology in testing the long-run risks model of Bansal and Yaron (2004) is presented based on the observation that, under the null, the potentially latent state variables, long-run risk and the conditional variance of its innovation, are known affine functions of the observable...

We present evidence that shocks to household consumption growth are negatively skewed, persistent, countercyclical, and drive asset prices. We construct a parsimonious model where heterogeneous households have recursive preferences. A single state variable drives the conditional cross-sectional...