We study the term structure of variance swaps, equity and variance risk premia. A model-free analysis reveals a significant price jump component in variance swap rates. A model-based analysis shows that investors' willingness to ensure against volatility risk increases after a market drop. This...

This paper proposes to build "implied stochastic volatility models" designed to fit option-implied volatility data, and implements a method to construct such models. The method is based on explicitly linking shape characteristics of the implied volatility surface to the specification of the...

We propose an empirical implementation of the consumption-investment problem using the martingale representation alternative to dynamic programming. Our method is based on the direct observation of state prices from options data. This greatly simplifies the investor's task of specifying the...