We contrast two different asset pricing models, where the pricing kernel either (i) increases in the volatility dimension, reflecting investors' aversion to volatility, or (ii) could be non-monotonic in volatility, reflecting heterogeneity in investors' beliefs. The two models yield opposite...

We propose a model of volatility tail behavior, in which the pricing measure dominates the physical measure in both tails of the volatility distribution and, hence, the derived pricing kernel exhibits an increasing and decreasing region in the volatility dimension. The model features investors...

This paper proposes a risk measure, based on first-passage probability, which reflects intra-horizon risk in jump models with finite or infinite jump activity. Our empirical investigation shows, first, that the proposed risk measure consistently exceeds the benchmark Value-at-Risk (VaR). Second,...

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...

We propose an extension of standard asymmetric volatility models in the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) class that admits conditional non-Gaussianities in a tractable fashion. Our "bad environment-good environment" (BEGE) model utilizes two gamma-distributed...

We study the volatility risk premia for the G9 currencies and find that they are negative, significant, both statistically and economically, and time varying. Our analysis indicates that the currency volatility risk premia covary with other prominent risk premia that have attracted attention in...

The volatilities of Treasury and time deposit markets comove with equity volatility quite heterogeneously over time, with correlations ranging from negative to positive, and marked by periods of rapid movement. What is the price of Treasury volatility or, say, that of the Eurodollar LIBOR? How...

Eurodollar deposit volatility comoves with equity volatility quite heterogeneously over time, with correlations ranging from negative to positive, and marked by periods of rapid movement. What is the price of time deposit volatility? How can we express this price in a model-free format? Despite...

Credit volatility correlates quite modestly with equity volatility. Currently, only backward-looking indexes for credit volatility exist. We derive model-free indexes of expected CDS index spread volatility that rely on CDS index option prices, which re ect the fair value of dedicated credit...

While CBOE's VIX index is widely acknowledged as a broad-based investor “fear gauge” for its strong inverse relationship with major equity indexes, one cannot necessarily expect it to translate to the level of future turbulence or investor risk aversion in fixed-income markets. Indeed,...