The illiquidity of long-maturity options has made it difficult to study the term structures of option spanning portfolios. This paper proposes a new estimation and inference framework for these option-implied term structures that addresses long-maturity illiquidity. By building a sieve estimator...

Supported by empirical examples, this paper provides a theoretical analysis on the impacts of using a suboptimal information set for the estimation of the empirical pricing kernel and, more in general, for the validity of the fundamental theorems of asset pricing. While inferring the...

This paper proposes a preference-based general equilibrium model that explains the pricing of the S&P 500 index options since the 1987 market crash. The central ingredients are a peso component in the consumption growth rate and the time-varying risk aversion induced by habit formation that...

We model the S&P500 index options dynamics using the CGMY distribution, with independent "up" and "down" return jumps, and diffusive jump intensities. Allowing the up and down parts to be separately parameterised accounts for the dynamic smirk effect, without correlation between returns and...

The aggregate implied cost of capital (ICC) from analyst estimates finds a variety of applications in finance and is documented to predict the equity premium. Yet, the construction of the analyst-based ICC is data intensive and imposes restrictions on the employed analyst estimates. We suggest a...

Risk premia are related to price probability ratios or for continuous time pure jump processes the ratios of jump arrival rates under the pricing and physical measures. The variance gamma model is employed to synthesize densities with risk premia seen as the ratio of the three parameters. The...

The value premium is the empirical observation that low market/book “value” stocks have higher returns than high market/book “growth” stocks. In this paper, we investigate and present evidence for an “equity as a call option hypothesis” for the value premium. Volatility decreases the...

We propose a novel factor model for option returns. Option exposures are estimated nonparametrically and factor risk premia can vary nonlinearly with states. The model is estimated using regressions, with minimal assumptions on factor and option return dynamics. Using index options, we...

Researchers who estimate affine term structure models often impose overidentifying restrictions (restrictions on parameters beyond those necessary for identification) for a variety of reasons. While some of those restrictions seem to have minor effects on the extracted factors and some measures...

While empirical literature has documented a negative relation between default risk and stock returns, the theory suggests that default risk should be positively priced. We provide an explanation for this "default anomaly", by calculating monthly probabilities of default (PDs) for a large sample...