During the global financial crisis, stressed market conditions led to skyrocketing corporate bond spreads that could not be explained by conventional modeling approaches. This paper builds on this observation and sheds light on time-variations in the relationship between systematic risk factors...

The shape of the VIX term structure conveys information about the price of variance risk rather than expected changes in the VIX, a rejection of the expectations hypothesis. A single principal component, Slope, summarizes nearly all this information, predicting the excess returns of S&P 500...

The recent collapse of the stock market has refocused attention on the question of the equity risk premium. One of the most comprehensive studies of the equity premium, completed by Fama and French in 2000, is now significantly out of date and requires refreshing. This article provides that...

I document that the term structure of one-period expected returns on dividend-claims is counter-cyclical: it is downward sloping in good times, but upward sloping in bad times. The counter-cyclical variation is consistent with theories of long-run risk and habit, but these theories cannot...

This article examines downside risk premiums using S&P 500 index (SPX) options. Portfolios are constructed using the index options to replicate the downside risk factors and their average excess returns provide estimates of downside risk premiums. We show that all the market risk premium comes...

I study a novel data set of short-term dividend futures contracts for individual stocks. I combine this data with dividend forecasts from equity research analysts to construct a model-free measure of short-term equity risk premia. I provide the first description of the cross-section of risk...

As corporate bonds are primarily denominated in nominal terms, inflation uncertainty arises as a relevant source of risk. This paper analyzes the relevance of inflation volatility risk as an additional factor predicting the cross-section of corporate bond returns. I find a negative and...

We develop a conditional capital asset pricing model in continuous-time that allows for stochastic beta exposure. When beta co-moves with market variance and the stochastic discount factor (SDF), beta risk is priced, and the expected return on a stock deviates from the security market line. The...

Why is an inverted yield-curve slope such a powerful predictor of future recessions? We show that a decomposition of the yield curve slope into its expectations and risk premia components helps disentangle the channels that connect fluctuations in Treasury rates and the future state of the...

During the global financial crisis, stressed market conditions led to skyrocketing corporate bond spreads that could not be explained by conventional modeling approaches. This paper builds on this observation and sheds light on time-variations in the relationship between systematic risk factors...