This paper shows that the risk-bearing capacity of U.S. securities brokers and dealers is a strong determinant of risk premia in commodity markets. Commodity derivatives are the principal instrument used by producers and consumers of commodities to hedge against commodity price risk....

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,...

In this paper we introduce a discrete time pricing model for a European call option when the log-return of the underlying stock (asset) is subject to discontinuous market regime type of shifts in its mean or volatility whose risk can be priced in the market. The paper shows how to estimate this...

The theory of two price markets of Cherny and Madan (2010) yields closed forms for bid and ask prices. Defining profits as the difference between the mid quote and the risk neutral expectation and capital as difference between the ask and the bid price one obtains precise expressions for these...

This paper presents an option positioning that allows us to infer forward variances from option portfolios. The forward variances we construct from equity index options help to predict (i) growth in measures of real economic activity, (ii) Treasury bill returns, (iii) stock market returns, and...

We develop a zero beta industry model of growth options to explain the conflicting empirical findings on the relation between stock returns and idiosyncratic return volatility at the firm level. By allowing for the volatility of the underlying idiosyncratic choice variables to exhibit...

This paper estimates how the shape of the implied volatility smile and the size of the variance risk premium relate to parameters of GARCH-type time-series models measuring how conditional volatility responds to return shocks. Markets in which return shocks lead to large increases in conditional...

A time homogeneous, purely discontinuous, parsimonous Markov martingale model is proposed for the risk neutral dynamics of equity forward prices. Transition probabilities are in the variance gamma class with spot dependent parameters. Markov chain approximations give access to option prices. The...

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 article provides empirical support for the theory that closed-end fund discounts reflect expected investment performance. Evidence is presented to explain how equity closed-end fund initial public offerings (IPOs) can sell at a premium when existing funds sell at a discount and why the...