We develop statistics to represent the option implied stochastic discount factor for S&P 500 returns between 1990 and 2008. Our statistics, which we call State Prices of Conditional Quantiles (SPOCQ), estimate the market's willingness to pay for insurance against outcomes in various quantiles of...

In 2008, wheat futures prices spiked and then crashed along with prices for other agricultural and nonagricultural commodities. Market observers offered several theories to explain this common movement, or comovement, in prices, and have proposed policies to address the perceived problem of...