Material news events can be potentially important sources of jumps in stock returns. We collect 21 million news articles associated with more than 9,000 publicly-traded companies and use textual analyses to derive measures to summarize the news. We find that stock return jumps (including...

Aggregate implied volatility spread (IVS), defined as the cross-sectional average difference in the implied volatilities of at-the-money call and put equity options, is significantly and positively related to future stock market returns at daily, weekly, monthly, to semiannual horizons. This...

This study examines whether the term of the auditor-client relationship (i.e., auditor tenure) is associated with future stock price crash risk measured both ex ante and ex post. Using a large sample of U.S. public firms with Big Four auditors, we find robust evidence that auditor tenure is...

Most extant structural credit risk models underestimate credit spreads while matching default rates, recoveries, leverage, and equity risk premia - a shortcoming known as the credit spread puzzle. We calibrate and estimate a model able to explain medium to long-term credit spreads by...

We build an equilibrium model to explain why stock return predictability concentrates in bad times. The key feature is that investors use different forecasting models, and hence assess uncertainty differently. As economic conditions deteriorate, uncertainty rises and investors' opinions...

This paper investigates the effects of the issuance of retail products with non-linear payoffs on option prices. For a given underlying asset, when the outstanding volume of products embedding a short-put position increases, implied volatility at the corresponding strike decreases. A similar...