I provide evidence that risks in macroeconomic fundamentals contain valuable information about bond risk premia. I extract factors from a set of quantile-based risk measures estimated for US macroeconomic variables and document that they account for up to 31% of the variation in excess bond...

We use a series of different approaches to extract information about crash risk from option prices for the Euro-Dollar exchange rate, with each step sharpening the focus on extracting more specific measures of crash risk around dates of ECB measures of Unconventional Monetary Policy. Several...

Monetary policy, as captured by changes in the Fed funds rate (FFR), is a useful signal for investors. I analyze the economic significance of trading strategies based on the “out-of-sample” forecasting power of FFR for excess equity returns. A simple market timing strategy produces an annual...

This study empirically examine the impact of market conditions on credit spreads as motivated by recently developed structural credit risk models. Using credit default swap (CDS) spreads, we find that, in the time series, average credit spreads are decreasing in GDP growth rate, but increasing...

In this paper I investigate the relation between macroeconomic risk and higher-moment risk premia. I use existing methodology on higher-moment swaps and estimate the excess returns for variance and skewness swaps. I also introduce new methodology for kurtosis swaps. The expected excess returns...

This paper presents an option positioning that allows us to infer forward variances from option portfolios. The forward variances we construct from equity index options help to predict (i) growth in measures of real economic activity, (ii) Treasury bill returns, (iii) stock market returns, and...

We study a production-based present-value relation that implies that fluctuations in the marginal profit-to-marginal Q ratio (mq) are driven by variations in the expected growth of marginal profits (cash-flow channel), expected investment return changes (discount-rate channel), or both. We find...

The effectiveness of the foreign exchange market interventions conducted by the Deutsche Bundesbank during the Louvre period to alter either the level or the volatility of the $/DM spot rate is examined. Volatility quotes implicit in foreign currency options are employed to recover the impact of...

We show that decomposing macroeconomic risks across horizon is key to uncover a tight link between risk premia and the real economy. Exposure in four-year returns to innovations in macroeconomic growth and volatility with a matching half-life of over four years is priced in a wide variety of...