We construct downside variance risk premiums from the crude oil and gold option data and use them as proxies for market downside uncertainty risks. We find that these downside variance risk premiums contain commodity market specifc pricing information. Further- more, the gold market's exposure...

This paper deals with three aspects of spectacular oil price episodes such as the one witnessed in 2008. First, the concept of temporary explosiveness is proposed as an empirical method for capturing this type of behavior. The application of a recently proposed recursive unit root test shows...