We introduce a novel class of term structure models for variance swaps. The multivariate state process is characterized by a quadratic diffusion function. The variance swap curve is quadratic in the state variable and available in closed form, greatly facilitating empirical analysis. Various...

This paper shows that the VIX market contains information on the variance of the S&P 500 returns, which is not already spanned by the S&P 500 market. We estimate a flexible affine model based on a joint time series of underlying indexes and option prices on both markets. We find that including...