This work presents a theoretical and empirical evaluation of the role of market belief in the structure of risk premia. Our main result is that fluctuations in market belief are large contributors to the time variability of risk premia. On average, the risk premium on holding Federal Funds...

We propose a novel and tractable equilibrium model to study how information asymmetry, competition among market makers, and investors' risk aversion affect asset pricing, market illiquidity and welfare. The main innovation is that market makers compete through choosing simultaneously quantities...

This paper examines how the sentiment of firm-specific news affects CDS spreads conditional on the degree of information asymmetry. Using a large set of news releases, we document a strong negative relationship between the sentiment of firm-specific news and CDS spreads. More importantly,...

Using positions data on bond futures, I document that speculators' spread trades contain private information about future economic activities and asset prices. Strong steepening trades are associated with negative payroll surprises in subsequent months and can predict asset markets' reaction to...

This paper examines the risk premium associated with information shocks in equity markets. For all stocks traded on Borsa Istanbul between March 2005 and December 2020, we calculate information shocks as unanticipated information asymmetry by focusing on changes in the proportion of the...

Systematic mispricing primarily affects speculative stocks and predominantly results in overpricing, predicting lower average returns. Because speculative stocks overlap with stocks deemed risky by rational models, failing to control for exposure to systematic mispricing can bias tests of...

These days it's become convention (reinforced by the media's treatment of wealth) to assess our net worth by tallying up the market value of our financial assets, even though it's more natural and useful to think of our wealth as a stream of dollars over time given the nature of our income and...

The longest bull market in US stock market history is over. Uncertainty over the public health and economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic will keep markets extremely volatile, making it likely we'll touch a wide range of price levels in the months ahead. Amidst such uncertainty, it's a...

We use learning in an equilibrium model to explain the puzzling predictive power of the volatility risk premium (VRP) for option returns. In the model, a representative agent follows a rational Bayesian learning process in an economy under incomplete information with the objective of pricing...

The VIX barely drops at macro-announcements. This is at odds with virtually all models that attempt to explain the "macro-announcement premium." We point out that the macro-announcement sample is too small, considering the high volatility and fat tail of daily returns. Our small-sample argument...