The 1987 market crash was associated with a dramatic and permanent steepening of the implied volatility curve for equity index options, despite minimal changes in aggregate consumption. We explain these events within a general equilibrium framework in which expected endowment growth and economic...

In a tractable stochastic volatility model, we identify the price of the smile as the price of the unspanned risks traded in SPX option markets. The price of the smile reflects two persistent volatility and skewness risks, which imply a downward sloping term structure of low-frequency variance...

The 1987 market crash was associated with a dramatic and permanent steepening of the implied volatility curve for equity index options, despite minimal changes in aggregate consumption. We explain these events within a general equilibrium framework in which expected endowment growth and economic...

Stocks are exposed to the risk of sudden downward jumps. Additionally, a crash in one stock (or index) can increase the risk of crashes in other stocks (or indices). Our paper explicitly takes this contagion risk into account and studies its impact on the portfolio decision of a CRRA investor...

Using daily options prices on the Eurostoxx 50 stock index over the whole year 2008, we compare the performance of three popular stochastic volatility models (Heston, 1993; Bates, 1996; Heston and Nandi, 2'007, in addition to the traditional Black-Scholes model and a proprietary trading desk model. We...

We use a series of different approaches to extract information about crash risk from option prices for the Euro-Dollar exchange rate, with each step sharpening the focus on extracting more specific measures of crash risk around dates of ECB measures of Unconventional Monetary Policy. Several...

This paper develops a formula to numerically estimate the unsubsidized, fair-market value of the toxic assets purchased with Federal Reserve loans. It finds that subsidy rates on these loans were on average 33.9 percent at origination. In contrast, by the 3rd quarter of the 2010, there was on...

In his Berkshire Hathaway annual newsletter to investors c.20 years ago, Warren Buffett while discussing the Long Term Capital Management LTCM and Enron collapses, famously called derivatives: "financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially...

We formalize the idea that the financial sector can be a source of non-fundamental risk. Households' desire to hedge against price volatility can generate price volatility in equilibrium, even absent fundamental risk. Fearing that asset prices may fall, risk-averse households demand safe assets...

This paper shows that standard disaster risk models are inconsistent with the behavior of stock market volatility and credit spreads during disasters. We resolve this shortcoming by incorporating persistent macroeconomic crises into a structural credit risk model. The model successfully captures...