We develop a new approach for pricing European-style contingent claims written on the time T spot price of an underlying asset whose volatility is stochastic. Like most of the stochastic volatility literature, we assume continuous dynamics for the price of the underlying asset. In contrast to most of the stochastic volatility literature, we do not directly model the dynamics of the instantaneou...

They should reduce their equity position. We study the portfolio problem of a long-horizon investor that allocates between a risk-less and a risky asset in an environment where both volatility and expected returns are time-varying. We find that investors, regardless of their horizon, should substantially decrease risk exposure after an increase in volatility. Ignoring variation in volatility le...

Financial theory suggests residual volatility should not be related to expected returns due to diversification. A robust portfolio construction process reduces volatility by investing in a large number of assets that span different geographies and industries. Firm-specific volatility largely washes out. What is left is systematic volatility related to common sources of return variation. Wes Cri...

We study specific nonlinear transformations of the Black-Scholes implied volatility to show remarkable properties of the volatility surface. Model-free bounds on the implied volatility skew are given. Pricing formulas for the European options which are written in terms of the implied volatility are given. In particular, we prove elegant formulas for the fair strikes of the variance swap and the...

Economic theory predicts that the integration of financial markets lowers the volatility of consumption. In this paper, we study long-term trends in the consumption volatility of the G7 countries. Using different measures of financial openness, we find some evidence that greater financial openness has been associated with lower consumption volatility. However, volatility of consumption relative...

This paper provides a set of empirical tests of the cross-sectional variation of stock volatility and investablility, where investability is defined as the degree to which a stock is accessible to foreigners. Unlike previous studies, which focus on market volatility and market return, we study the relationship between individual stock return volatility and its investablility. Our findings have ...

Credit default swaps (CDS) are similar to out-of-the-money put options in that both offer a low cost and effective protection against downside risk. This study investigates whether put optionimplied volatility is an important determinant of CDS spreads. Using a large sample of firms with both CDS and options data, we find that individual firms’ put option-implied volatility dominates historical...

This paper assesses the robustness of the relative performance of spotand optionsbased volatility forecasts to the treatment of microstructure noise. Robustness of the results to the method of constructing option-implied forecasts is also investigated. Using a test for superior predictive ability, model-free implied volatility, which exploits information in the volatility ‘smile’, and at-the-mo...

We investigate empirically the role of trading volume (1) in predicting the relative informativeness of volatility forecasts produced by autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) models versus the volatility forecasts derived from option prices, and (2) in improving volatility forecasts produced by ARCH and option models and combinations of models. Daily and monthly data are explored...

Exchange rates differ considerably with respect to exchange rate volatility, while they are very similar with respect to the macroeconomic fundamentals — the well known exchange rate disconnect puzzle. The microeconomic structure of foreign exchange markets, especially the existence of noise traders, may be responsible for the excessive volatility in flexible exchange rate regimes. The entry of...