Estimation of risk-neutral (RN) moments is of great interest to both academics and practitioners. We study 1) the model-free measure of RN moments by Bakshi, Kapadia and Madan (2003); 2) RN moments that are used in the VIX and SKEW index by the Chicago Board Options Exchange; 3) nonparametric RN...

Time-varying leverage driven by common shocks to firm asset returns introduces a factor structure in idiosyncratic equity return volatilities (IVOL). In a standard dynamic capital structure model in which the CAPM holds for asset returns, we show that three factors explain the IVOL...

Risk-neutral traders executing derivative trades on behalf of portfolio managers maximize their expected profit compared to trading at pre-determined times by timing trades, using the quickly changing risk exposures of derivative baskets. The optimal order submission strategy is a sequence of...

Regulators often set value-at-risk (VaR) constraints to limit the portfolio risk of institutional investors. For some investors, notably pension funds, the VaR constraint is enforced over a horizon which is significantly shorter than the investment horizon of the investor. Our paper aims to...

This paper studies the dissemination of performance information in the mutual fund industry. We document a hump-shaped lag pattern for the reaction of mutual fund flows to past performance, i.e., we find that very recent performance is less important than performance several months ago. We...