In this paper, we provide evidence on two alternative mechanisms of interaction between returns and volatilities: the leverage effect and the volatility feedback effect. We stress the importance of distinguishing between realized volatility and implied volatility, and find that implied...

In this paper, we formally show that the cross-sectional variance of stock returns is a consistent and asymptotically efficient estimator for aggregate idiosyncratic volatility. This measure has two key advantages: it is model-free and observable at any frequency. Previous approaches have used...