This paper presents an internally consistent analysis of the economic determinants of the term structure of credit spreads across different credit rating classes and industry sectors. Our analysis proceeds in two steps. First, we extract three economic factors from 13 time series that capture...

From a large array of economic and financial data series, this paper identifies three fundamental risk dimensions underlying an economy: inflation, real output growth, and financial market volatility. Furthermore, through a no-arbitrage model, the paper links the dynamics and market pricing of...

The U.S. agency mortgage backed securities (MBS) market is deep and highly liquid, yet modeling MBS is extremely challenging. This paper applies market participants' desired requirements for a good pricing model to MBS pricing models provided by six of the top MBS dealers. We find that five out...

We propose a direct and robust method for quantifying the variance risk premium on financial assets. We show that the risk-neutral expected value of return variance, also known as the variance swap rate, is well approximated by the value of a particular portfolio of options. We propose to use...

This article analyzes the specifications of option pricing models based on time-changed Levy processes. We classify option pricing models based on (i) the structure of the jump component in the underlying return process, (ii) the source of stochastic volatility, and (iii) the specification of...

This article proposes a stylized model that reconciles several seemingly conflicting findings on financial security returns and option prices. The model is based on a pure jump Lévy process, wherein the jump arrival rate obeys a power law dampened by an exponential function. The model allows...

We identify and characterize a class of term structure models where bond yields are quadratic functions of the state vector. We label this class the quadratic class and aim to lay a solid theoretical foundation for its future empirical application. We consider asset pricing in general and...

Uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) is one of three key theoretical relations used in analytical work in both international finance and international monetary economics. The problem, however, is that UIP does not seem to hold up well empirically. In this paper, we argue that the failures of UIP...

We document the behavior of over-the-counter currency option prices across moneyness, maturity, and calendar time on two of the most actively traded currency pairs over the past eight years. We find that the risk-neutral distribution of currency returns is relatively symmetric on average....

In this paper we extend the model of Easley and O'Hara (1992) to allow the arrival rates of informed and uninformed trades to be time-varying and forecastable. We specify a generalized autoregressive bivariate process for the arrival rates of informed and uninformed trades and estimate the model...