We study the pricing of shocks to uncertainty and volatility using a novel and wide-ranging set of options contracts. If uncertainty shocks are viewed as bad by investors, portfolios that hedge them should earn negative premia. Empirically, however, such portfolios have historically earned...

We study the pricing of uncertainty shocks using a wide-ranging set of options that reveal premia for macroeconomic risks. Portfolios hedging macro uncertainty have historically earned zero or even significantly positive returns, while those exposed to the realization of large shocks have earned...

In affine asset pricing models, the innovation to the pricing kernel is a function of innovations to current and expected future values of an economic state variable, for example consumption growth, aggregate market returns, or short-term interest rates. The impulse response of this priced...

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the relationship between aggregate uncertainty and the macroeconomy. We identify uncertainty shocks using methods from the literature on news shocks, following the observation that second-moment news is a shock to uncertainty. The key distinction we...

In the period 1996-2014, the average investor in the variance swap market was indifferent to news about future variance at horizons ranging from 1 month to 14 years. It is only purely transitory and unexpected realized variance that were priced. These results present a challenge to most...

In the period 1996-2014, the average investor in the variance swap market was indifferent to news about future variance at horizons ranging from 1 month to 14 years. It is only purely transitory and unexpected realized variance that were priced. These results present a challenge to most...