In light of the recently passed 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, we assess the effect of margin changes on prices, the risk-sharing between speculators and hedgers, and the price stability of 20 commodity futures markets. We find that margin increases decrease the rate at which prices change, yet they...

We explore whether the market variance risk premium (VRP) can be predicted. First, we propose a novel approach to measure VRP which distinguishes the investment horizon from the variance swap's maturity. We extract VRP from actual rather than synthetic S&P 500 variance swap quotes, thus avoiding...

We test one of the main predictions of the financial flexibility paradigm that expectations about future firm-specific shocks affect the firm's leverage. We extract the expectations of small and large future shocks from the market prices of equity options. We find that expectations for future...

We study the real-time characteristics and drivers of jumps in option prices. To this end, we employ high frequency data from the 24-hour E-mini S&P 500 options market. We find that option prices do not jump simultaneously across strikes and maturities and are uncorrelated with jumps in the...

We propose a new predictor of real economic activity (REA), namely the representative investor's implied relative risk aversion (IRRA) extracted from S&P 500 option prices. IRRA exploits the forward-looking information in option prices. It increases as risk averse investors enter the market,...

We explore whether the market variance risk premium (VRP) can be predicted. First, we propose a novel approach to measure VRP which distinguishes the investment horizon from the variance swap's maturity. We extract VRP from actual rather than synthetic S&P 500 variance swap quotes, thus avoiding...

We revisit the question whether commodities should be included in investors' portfolios. We employ for the first time a stochastic dominance efficiency (SDE) approach to construct optimal portfolios with and without commodities and we evaluate their comparative performance. SDE circumvents the...

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 propose a new predictor of U.S. real economic activity (REA), namely the representative investor's implied relative risk aversion (IRRA) extracted from S&P 500 option prices. IRRA is forward-looking and hence, it is expected to be related to future economic conditions. We document that U.S....

We construct novel proxies of physical and transition climate risks by conducting textual analysis of climate-change news over the period 2000-2018. This analysis uncovers four textual variables related to the topics of U.S. climate policy, international summits, natural disasters, and global...