The Federal Reserve (Fed) uses a unique auction mechanism to purchase U.S. Treasury securities in implementing its quantitative easing (QE) policy. In this paper, we study the outcomes of QE auctions and participating dealers' bidding behaviors from November 2010 to September 2011, during which...

Using prices of both S&P 500 options and recently introduced VIX options, we study asset pricing implications of volatility risk. While pointing out the joint pricing kernel is not identified nonparametrically, we propose model-free estimates of marginal pricing kernels of the market return and...

Auction theory has ambiguous implications regarding the relative efficiency of three formats of multiunit auctions: uniform-price, discriminatory-price, and Vickrey auctions. We empirically evaluate the performance of these three auction formats using the bid-level data of the Federal Reserve's...