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...

We present a simple methodology that integrates commodity and asset pricing models. Given current evidence on the financialization of commodity markets, valuable information about commodity risk premiums can be extracted from asset pricing models and used to substantially improve the estimates...

We investigate the importance of ambiguity, or Knightian uncertainty, in executives' decisions about when to exercise stock options. We develop an empirical estimate of ambiguity and include it in regression models alongside the more traditional measure of risk, equity volatility. We show that...

Many financial instruments are designed with embedded leverage such as options and leveraged exchange traded funds (ETFs). Embedded leverage alleviates investors' leverage constraints and, therefore, we hypothesize that embedded leverage lowers required returns. Consistent with this hypothesis,...

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...

We develop a new parametric estimation procedure for option panels observed with error which relies on asymptotic approximations assuming an ever increasing set of observed option prices in the moneyness- maturity (cross-sectional) dimension, but with a fixed time span. We develop consistent...

We document that the implied volatility skew of S&P 500 index puts is non-decreasing in the disaster index and risk-neutral variance, contrary to the implications of a broad class of no-arbitrage models. The key to the puzzle lies in recognizing that, as the disaster risk increases, customers...

We present a real-options model of takeovers and disinvestment in declining industries. As product demand declines, a first-best closure level is reached, where overall value is maximized by shutting down the .rm and releasing its capital to investors. Absent takeovers, managers of unlevered...

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...

Derivatives exposures across large financial institutions often contribute to - if not necessarily create - systemic risk. Current reporting standards for derivatives exposures are nevertheless inadequate for assessing these systemic risk contributions. In this paper, I explain how a...