Spreads of agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) vary significantly in the cross section and over time, but the sources of this variation are not well understood. We document that, in the cross section, MBS spreads adjusted for the prepayment option show a pronounced smile with respect to the...

A small but ambitious literature uses affine arbitrage-free models to estimate jointly U.S. Treasury term premiums and the term structure of equity risk premiums. Within this approach, this paper identifies the parameter restrictions that are consistent with a simple dividend discount model,...

Does the selection of a specific interest rate model to use for pricing, hedging, and risk-return analysis depend upon whether the user is a buy-side institution or a sell-side dealer bank? Sanjay Nawalkha and Riccardo Rebonato debate this question in this paper and provide some insightful...

This paper examines how the Fed's monetary policy decisions affect the implied volatility of the S&P 500 index. The results show that stock market uncertainty is significantly affected by the Fed's policy decisions. In particular, we find that implied volatility generally decreases after FOMC...

This paper provides an empirical study on the predictability of implied volatility using dataset collected from the London over-the-counter currency option market. The present work is motivated by the lack of empirical studies that address implied volatility characteristics across various...

The objective of this paper is to consider defaultable term structure models in a general setting beyond standard risk-neutral models. Using as numeraire the growth optimal portfolio, defaultable interest rate derivatives are priced under the real-world probability measure. Therefore, the...

This paper examines the effects of liquidity during the 2007-09 crisis, focussing on the senior tranche of the CDX.NA.IG Index and on Moody's AAA Corporate Bond Index. The aim is to understand whether these senior credit indices were discounted below fair value and to what extent this discount...

A growing body of literature confirms the significance of the commodity futures basis factor: It has a significantly positive premium and it explains the cross-section of commodity-futures excess returns. We extend the literature by documenting predictive relation between this factor and the...

This paper explores differences in the impact of equally large positive and negative surprise return shocks in the aggregate U.S. stock market on: 1) the volatility predictions of asymmetric time series models, 2) implied volatility, and 3) realized volatility. Both asymmetric time series models...

Using day-end pricing data from a comprehensive data base not readily available outside of China, an algorithm to trade near-the-money call option time spreads on China's SSE 50 ETF was developed and tested. Analysis of in-sample data, suggested profitable trading rules that, when applied to...