Based on the theory of static replication of variance swaps we assess the sign and magnitude of variance risk premiums in foreign exchange markets. We find significantly negative risk premiums when realized variance is computed from intraday data with low frequency. As a likely consequence of...

We develop a new option pricing framework that tightly integrates with how institutional investors manage options positions. The framework starts with the near-term dynamics of the implied volatility surface and derives no-arbitrage constraints on its current shape. Within this framework, we...

This paper examines the properties of the variance risk premium (VRP). We propose a flexible asset pricing model that captures co-jumps in prices and volatility, and self-exciting jump clustering. We estimate the model on equity returns and variance swap rates at different horizons. The total...

We document that properly scaled deviations from put-call parity estimate the contribution of market frictions to expected returns (CFER) accurately, by means of a non-parametric theoretically founded identification strategy. The required conditions are that our estimator predicts the underlying...

Fixed income Asian options are frequently adopted by companies to hedge interest rate risk. Having a payoff structure depending on the cumulative short-term rate makes them particularly informativeabout interest rate volatility risk. Based on a joint dataset of bonds and Asian interest rate...

We show that sudden and large price moves in bitcoin prices, which we call jumps, explain a large portion of the variation in bitcoin returns. In order to do so, we use the general utility specification adopted in Maheu et al. (2013) for characterizing the conditional mean of daily bitcoin...

We derive a model-free option-based formula to estimate the contribution of market frictions to expected returns (CFER) within an asset pricing setting. We estimate CFER for the U.S. optionable stocks. We document that CFER is sizable, it predicts stock returns and it subsumes the effect of...

We characterize time-varying disaster risk using interbank rates and their options. The identification of disaster risk has remained a significant challenge due to the rarity of macroeconomic disasters. We make an identification assumption that macroeconomic disasters coincide with banking...

The main goal of this paper is to study the cross-sectional pricing of market volatility. The paper proposes that the market return, the diffusion volatility, and the jump volatility are fundamental factors that change the investors' investment opportunity set. Based on estimates of the...

This paper analyzes the valuation of day-ahead Physical Transmission Rights (PTRs) on the German-Dutch interconnector. From a financial perspective, PTRs are options written on the difference between the German and Dutch hourly electricity prices. We propose a model for the valuation of...