I extend the classical general equilibrium treatment of uncertainty about exogenous states of nature to uncertainty about prices. Traders do not know the prices at which markets will clear but have expectations over possible prices. They trade price-contingent securities (derivatives) to insure...

Research papers in empirical finance and financial econometrics are among the most widely cited, downloaded and viewed articles in the discipline of Finance. The special issue presents several papers by leading scholars in the field on “Recent Developments in Financial Economics and...

Risk management is crucial for optimal portfolio management. One of the fastest growing areas in empirical finance is the expansion of financial deriva-tives. The purpose of this special issue on “Risk Management and Financial Deriva-tives” is to highlight some areas in which novel...

A discrete time model of financial markets is considered. It is assumed that the relative jumps of the risky security price are independent non-identically distributed random variables. In the focus of attention is the expected non-risky profit of the investor that arises when the jumps of the...

Using daily options prices on the Eurostoxx 50 stock index over the whole year 2008, we compare the performance of three popular stochastic volatility models (Heston, 1993; Bates, 1996; Heston and Nandi, 2'007, in addition to the traditional Black-Scholes model and a proprietary trading desk model. We...

We show that idiosyncratic jumps are a key determinant of mean stock returns from both an ex post and ex ante perspective. Ex post, the entire annual average return of a typical stock accrues on the four days on which its stock price jumps. Ex ante, idiosyncratic jump risk earns a premium: a...

We extract variance and skew risk premiums from volatility derivatives in a model-free way and analyze their relationships along with volatility index and equity index returns. These risk premiums can be synthesized through option trading strategies. Using a time series of option prices on the...

This paper examines the cross section of options implied volatility and corporate bond returns. We document a strong predictive ability of corporate bond returns using changes in call and put options implied volatility. Specifically, a strategy of buying (selling) the portfolio with lowest...

We study momentum and mean-reversion strategies in commodity futures prices and their relationship to momentum and mean-reversion in commodity spot prices. We find that momentum performs well in futures markets, but not in spot markets, and that mean-reversion performs well in spot markets, but...