We show that the prices of risk for factors that are nonlinear in the market return are readily obtained using index option prices. The price of co-skewness risk corresponds to the market variance risk premium, and the price of co-kurtosis risk corresponds to the market skewness risk premium....

Standard option valuation models leave no room for option illiquidity premia. Yet we find the risk-adjusted return spread for illiquid over liquid equity options is 3.4 percent per day for at-the-money calls and 2.5 percent for at-the-money puts. These premia are computed using option...

We embed systematic default, pro-cyclical recovery rates and habit persistence into a model with a slight possibility of a macroeconomic disaster of reasonable magnitude. We derive analytical solutions for defaultable bond prices and show that a single set of structural parameters calibrated to...

Options on crude oil futures are the most actively traded commodity options. We develop a class of computationally efficient discrete-time jump models that allow for closed-form option valuation, and we use crude oil futures and options data to investigate the economic importance of jumps and...

After the financialization of commodity futures markets in 2004-05 oil volatility has become a strong predictor of returns and volatility of the overall stock market. Furthermore, stocks' exposure to oil volatility risk now drives the cross-section of expected returns. The difference in average...

Equity risk measured by beta is of great interest to both academics and practitioners. Existing estimates of beta use historical returns. Many studies have found option-implied volatility to be a strong predictor of future realized volatility. We find that option-implied volatility and skewness...