I develop a new spectrum of moment bounds on the pricing kernel. They stem from the solution of an optimization problem that is complementary to Hansen and Jagannathan's (1991) approach. Economically, they measure the discrepancy between what an optimizing agent could achieve if all assets (that...

We estimate the term structure of the price of variance risk (PVR), which helps distinguish between competing asset-pricing theories. First, we measure the PVR as proportional to the Sharpe ratio of short-term holding returns of delta-neutral index straddles; second, we estimate the PVR in a...