Principal component analysis of equity options on Dow-Jones firms reveals a strong factor structure. The first principal component explains 77% of the variation in the equity volatility level, 77% of the variation in the equity option skew, and 60% of the implied volatility term structure across...

Which loss function should be used when estimating and evaluating option valuation models? Many different functions have been suggested, but no standard has emerged. We emphasize that consistency in the choice of loss functions is crucial. First, for any given model, the loss function used in...

Options on crude oil futures are the most actively traded commodity options. We develop a class of computationally efficient discrete-time jump models that allow for closed-form option valuation, and we use crude oil futures and options data to investigate the economic importance of jumps and...

Both large oil price increases and decreases are associated with deteriorating economic conditions. Consistent with this stylized fact, we find that the projection of the state price density (SPD) on oil returns estimated from oil futures and option prices displays a U-shaped pattern. Because...

Consistent with models in which intermediaries absorb net demand pressure from end-users and respond by changing prices, net option demand is positively related to option prices in the market for VIX puts and VIX calls. These findings are consistent with existing results for S&P 500 index (SPX)...

A substantial portion of the variation in the market variance risk premium can be explained by the conditional covariance between the market return and its variance, which we refer to as the leverage effect. This finding holds at different data frequencies and for various sample periods, and it...

We show that the prices of risk for factors that are nonlinear in the market return are readily obtained using index option prices. The price of co-skewness risk corresponds to the market variance risk premium, and the price of co-kurtosis risk corresponds to the market skewness risk premium....

Equity options display a strong factor structure. The first principal components of the equity volatility levels, skews, and term structures explain a substantial fraction of the cross-sectional variation. Furthermore, these principal components are highly correlated with the S&P500 index option...

We develop a tractable dynamic model of an index option market maker with limited capital and characterize how option prices depend on inventory risk and market maker wealth. The risk averse market maker absorbs positive demand by end users and requires a more negative variance risk premium when...

We model the impact of supply and demand on risk premiums in electricity futures, using daily data for 2003-2014. The model provides a satisfactory fit and allows for unspanned economic risk not embedded in the futures price. The spot risk premium and forward bias implied by the model are on...