We introduce the Homoscedastic Gamma [HG] model where the distribution of returns is characterized by its mean, variance and an independent skewness parameter under both measures. The model predicts that the spread between historical and risk-neutral volatilities is a function of the risk...

This paper studies the impact of international capital flows on asset prices through risk premia. We investigate whether foreign purchases of U.S. Treasury securities significantly contributed to the decline in excess returns on long-term bonds between 1995 and 2008. We run forecasting...

This paper assesses the quantitative impact of ambiguity on the historically observed equity premium. We consider a Lucas-tree pure exchange economy with a single agent where we introduce two key non-standard assumptions. First, the agent's beliefs about the dividend/consumption process is...

This paper assesses the quantitative impact of ambiguity on the historically observed equity premium. We consider a Lucas-tree pure–exchange economy with a single agent where we introduce two key non- standard assumptions. First, the agent's beliefs about the dividend/consumption process is...

The last 30 years saw substantial increases in wealth inequality and in stock market participation, smaller increases in consumption inequality and the fraction of indebted households, a decline in interest rates and in the expected equity premium, as well as a prolonged stock market boom....

We can only estimate the distribution of stock returns but from option prices we observe the distribution of state prices. State prices are the product of risk aversion – the pricing kernel – and the natural probability distribution. The Recovery Theorem enables us to separate these so as to...

Asset prices contain information about the probability distribution of future states and the stochastic discounting of those states as used by investors. To better understand the challenge in distinguishing investors' beliefs from risk-adjusted discounting, we use Perron-Frobenius Theory to...

While much is known about the financialization of commodities, less is known about how to profitably invest in commodities. We develop a four-factor asset pricing model of commodity returns. Our four-factor model prices both commodity spot and term risk premia in an intuitive manner related to...

Asset prices contain information about the probability distribution of future states and the stochastic discounting of these states. Without additional assumptions, probabilities and stochastic discounting cannot be separately identified. To understand this identification challenge, we extract a...