Did the August 2011 European short sale bans on financial stocks accomplish their goals? In order to answer this question, we use stock options' implied volatility skews to proxy for investors' risk aversion. We find that on ban announcement day, risk aversion levels rose for all stocks but more...

This paper investigates whether the overpricing of out-of-the money single stock calls can be explained by Tversky and Kahneman's (1992) cumulative prospect theory (CPT). We argue that these options are overpriced because investors' overweight small probability events and overpay for such...

Professional forecasters of economic data are remunerated based on accuracy and positive publicity generated for their firms. This remuneration structure incentivizes them to stick to the consensus but also to make bold forecasts when they perceive to have private information. We find that bold...

Low probability events are overweighted in the pricing of out-of-the-money index puts and single stock calls. This behavioral bias is strongly time-varying, and is linked to equity market sentiment and higher moments of the risk-neutral density. We find that our implied volatility (IV) sentiment...

This paper investigates whether the overpricing of out-of-the money single stock calls can be explained by Tversky and Kahneman's (1992) cumulative prospect theory (CPT). We hypothesize that these options are expensive because investors overweight small probability events and overpay for...