Cochrane and Piazzesi (2005) show that (i) lagged forward rates improve the predictability of annual bond returns, adding to current forward rates, and that (ii) a Markovian model for monthly forward rates cannot generate the pattern of predictability in annual returns. These results stand as a...

Expected returns vary when investors face time-varying investment opportunities. Longrun risk models (Bansal and Yaron 2004) and no-arbitrage affine models (Duffie, Pan, and Singleton 2000) emphasize sources of risk that are not observable to the econometrician. We show that, for both classes of...

We provide results for the valuation of European style contingent claims for a large class of specifications of the underlying asset returns. Our valuation results obtain in a discrete time, infinite state-space setup using the no-arbitrage principle and an equivalent martin-gale measure. Our...

We introduce generalized autoregressive gamma (GARG) processes, a class of autoregressive and moving-average processes that extends the class of existing autoregressive gamma (ARG) processes in one important dimension: each conditional moment dynamic is driven by a different and identifiable...

We introduce the Homoscedastic Gamma [HG] model where the distribution of returns is characterized by its mean, variance and an independent skewness parameter under both measures. The model predicts that the spread between historical and risk-neutral volatilities is a function of the risk...

Affine models are very popular in modeling financial time series as they allow for analytical calculation of prices of financial derivatives like treasury bonds and options. The main property of affine models is that the conditional cumulant function, defined as the logarithmic of the...

Macro news have large impact on bond yields in high-frequency data. We aggregate the impact of macro news within each month, which we use in a no-arbitrage term structure models. We find that macro news explain 50 percent in the term premium of the 10-year bond at the monthly frequency and 40...

We build a small-scale representation of an economy in which the short rate, inflation and output exhibit unobserved secular and cyclical components that both drive bond yields. We impose the economic restriction that expected bond returns are purely cyclical so that their variance does not...

We document that the term structures of risk-neutral expected loss and gain uncertainty on the S&P500 returns are upward sloping on average. These shapes mainly reflect the higher premium required by investors to hedge downside risk, and the belief that potential gains will increase in the...

Advances in variance analysis permit the splitting of the total quadratic variation of a jump-diffusion process into upside and downside components. Recent studies establish that this decomposition enhances volatility predictions, and highlight the upside/downside variance spread as a driver of...