The "leverage effect" refers to the well-established relationship between stock returns and both implied and realized volatility: volatility increases when the stock price falls. A standard explanation ties the phenomenon to the effect a change in market valuation of a firm's equity has on the...

In modern finance, the value of an active investment strategy is measured by comparing its performance against the benchmark of passively holding the market portfolio and the riskless asset.(...)

We examine the intraday behavior of the risk neutral probability density (RND) for the Standard and Poor's 500 Index extracted from a continuous real-time data feed of bid and ask quotes for index options. This allows an exceptionally detailed view of how investors' expectations about returns...

In the reduced-form approach to credit modeling, default frequency has been found to depend on several firm-specific factors, most notably credit rating. But aggregate default rates also vary substantially over time, presumably reflecting changes in general economic conditions. In this paper, we...