Stocks with large increases in call implied volatilities over the previous month tend to have high future returns while stocks with large increases in put implied volatilities over the previous month tend to have low future returns. Sorting stocks ranked into decile portfolios by past call...

Although the effects of economic news announcements on asset prices are well established, these relationships are unlikely to be stable. This paper documents the time variation in the responses of yield curves and exchange rates using high frequency data from January 2000 through August 2011....

Using nonparametric techniques, we develop a methodology for estimating conditional alphas and betas and long-run alphas and betas, which are the averages of conditional alphas and betas, respectively, across time. The tests can be performed for a single asset or jointly across portfolios. The...

Historically, commodity futures have had excess returns similar to those of equities. But what should we expect in the future? The usual risk factors are unable to explain the time-series variation in excess returns. In addition, our evidence suggests that commodity futures are an inconsistent,...

We study the nature of systemic sovereign credit risk using CDS spreads for the U.S. Treasury, individual U.S. states, and major European countries. Using a multifactor affine framework that allows for both systemic and sovereign-specific credit shocks, we find that there is considerable...

I build a dynamic capital structure model that demonstrates how business-cycle variations in expected growth rates, economic uncertainty, and risk premia influence firms' financing and default policies. Countercyclical fluctuations in risk prices, default probabilities, and default losses arise...

In a model with heterogeneous-risk-aversion agents facing margin constraints, we show how securities' required returns are characterized both by their betas and their margin requirements. Negative shocks to fundamentals make margin constraints bind, lowering risk-free rates and raising Sharpe...

The "Masters Hypothesis" is the claim that unprecedented buying pressure from new financial index investors created a massive bubble in agricultural futures prices at various times in recent years. This paper analyzes the market impact of financial index investment in agricultural futures...

Financial markets have become increasingly global in recent decades, yet the pricing of internationally traded assets continues to depend strongly upon local risk factors, leading to several observations that are difficult to explain with standard frameworks. Equity returns depend upon both...

We model the demand-pressure effect on prices when options cannot be perfectly hedged. The model shows that demand pressure in one option contract increases its price by an amount proportional to the variance of the unhedgeable part of the option. Similarly, the demand pressure increases the...