This paper derives a measure that characterizes the distance between the risk-neutral and the objective probability measures for any candidate asset pricing model. We formally show that the distance metric is equal to the volatility of the stochastic discount factor. This theoretical result...

This paper addresses questions regarding the dimensionality of the stochastic discount factor and the selection of the best factors that enter it. We analyze these questions theoretically and empirically with a novel methodology which performs both (i) estimation of factor loadings and (ii) best...

This study formalizes the departure between risk-neutral and physical index return volatilities, termed volatility spreads. Theoretically, the departure between risk neutral and physical index volatility is connected to the higher-order physical return moments and the parameters of the pricing...

This article presents a framework for studying the role of recovery on defaultable debt prices (for a wide class of processes describing recovery rates and default probability). These debt models have the ability to differentiate the impact of recovery rates and default probability, and can be...

The treatment of this article renders closed-form density approximation feasible for univariate continuous-time models. Implementation methodology depends directly on the parametric-form of the drift and the diffusion of the primitive process and not on its transformation to a unit-variance...

This article provides several new insights into the economic sources of skewness. First, we document the differential pricing of individual equity options versus the market index, and relate it to variations in return skewness. Second, we show how risk aversion introduces skewness in the...

This article develops and empirically implements a stock valuation model. The model makes three assumptions: (i) dividend equals a fixed fraction of net earnings-per-share plus noise; (ii) the economy's pricing kernel is consistent with the Vasicek term structure of interest rates; and (iii) the...

This article studies the valuation of options written on the average level of a Markov process. The general properties of such options are examined. We propose a closed-form characterization in which the option payoff is contingent on cumulative catastrophe losses. In our framework, the loss...

How do risk-neutral return skews evolve over time and in the cross-section of individual stocks? We document the differential pricing of individual equity options versus the market index, and relate it to variations in the skew. The change-of-measure induced by marginal-utility tilting of the...

This article investigates, both theoretically and empirically, the economics of stock market crashes. Using more than 100 years of daily data on the DJIA (and shorter series on NASDAQ, IBM, and Caterpillar), we first document empirically that (a) the probability of a daily stock market decline...