Options and earnings announcements: an empirical study for the European Options Exchange

In this paper we give an introduction in option pricing theory and explicitly specify the Black-Scholes model. Although market participants use this and similar models to price options, they violate one of the fundamental assumptions of the model. They do not set a constant value for the volatility of the underlying asset over time, but change the volatility even during a day. By means of event study methodology we investigate the volatility of the underlying asset and the volatility implicit in option prices around earnings announcements by firms. We find that the volatility in option prices increases before the announcement date and drops sharply afterwards. The volatility of the underlying stocks is higher only at the announcement dates and we do not observe a higher volatility around these dates. Hence, the constant volatility of the underlying asset, which is one of the assumptions in the Black-Scholes model, does not hold. However, the market seems to correctly anticipate the change in volatility, by correcting option prices.     

Aggregate stock market behavior and investors’ low risk aversion

This paper studies whether investors’ high risk aversion can be avoided in a representative-agent model that is able to explain aggregate stock market behavior in the US financial market. We present a consumption-based asset pricing model with a representative agent who has a ‘catching up with the Joneses’ preference to show that high risk aversion can be avoided in a representative-agent model that can help explain many of the empirically observed properties of the aggregate stock market return, including the equity premium and risk-free rate puzzles, the predictability of long-horizon stock returns, and the ‘leverage effect’ in return volatility.     

Leverage effect on stochastic volatility for option pricing in Hong Kong: A simulation and empirical study

This paper explores the importance of incorporating the financial leverage effect in the stochastic volatility models when pricing options. For the illustrative purpose, we first conduct the simulation experiment by using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling method. We then make an empirical analysis by applying the volatility models to the real return data of the Hang Seng index during the period from January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2017. Our results highlight the accuracy of the stochastic volatility models with leverage in option pricing when leverage is high. In addition, the leverage effect becomes more significant as the maturity of options increases. Moreover, leverage affects the pricing of in-the-money options more than that of at-the-money and out-of-money options. Our study is therefore useful for both asset pricing and portfolio investment in the Hong Kong market where volatility is an inherent nature of the economy.     

Bank capital and the macroeconomy: Policy considerations

We develop a macroeconomic model in which the balance sheet condition of financial institutions plays an important role in the determination of asset prices and economic activity. The financial intermediaries in our model are required to make investment commitments before a complete resolution of idiosyncratic funding risk that can be addressed only by costly refinancing, forcing them to behave in a risk-averse manner. The model shows that the balance sheet condition of intermediaries can drive asset values away from their fundamentals, causing aggregate investment and output to respond to shocks to intermediaries. We use this model to evaluate several public policies designed to address balance sheet problems at financial institutions. With regard to short-run policies, we find that capital injections conditioned upon voluntary recapitalization can be a more effective tool than asset purchases. With regard to long-run policies, we demonstrate that higher capital requirements can have sizable short-run effects on economic activity, and that a long transition period helps avoid undesirable side effects. Finally, we show that the marginal effects of policies can be larger during “crises” because of the nonlinear interactions between some financial frictions and policy actions.     

Estimating the elasticity of intertemporal substitution with leverage

Following the recent literature on intermediary asset pricing models, this paper argues that the marginal utility of wealth of financial intermediaries can be used to generate enough volatility and counter-cyclicality on the recursive preference-based stochastic discount factor. Hence, a dynamic econometric strategy of an asset pricing model with the market portfolio return and the leverage growth of financial intermediaries allows for a sensible economic estimate of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. On the contrary, the same framework with alternative measures of consumption produces extremely poor economic results.     

A much robust and updated evidences of the alternative real-estate based asset pricing

To response Harvey, Liu and Zhu’s and Gospodinov, Kan and Robotti’s criticism for an empirical study, we develop an alternative real-estate based model in asset pricing for an updated robustness. We make an innovation for the perspective of practitioners: the real-estate pricing factor is an alternative excess return of real estate portfolio. The results suggest that an updated and much robust role of the real-estate based asset pricing model: for example, the t-statistic of the real-estate pricing factor is higher than 3.00, suggesting that one is not derived from a data mining strategy. Moreover, we examine the performance of our alternative real-estate based model in a series of various portfolios (sorted in some vital anomalies); eventually, the results statistically support the real-estate based model.     

年报信息披露的超常收益及其影响因素

与年报盈余公告效应的研究不同,本文在拓展年报信息考虑范围的基础上,检验盈余信息、股利信息、账市比、成长性和财务风险等年报披露信息对不同公司规模的超常收益的解释能力。研究结果表明,年报信息披露窗口存在显著超常收益,账市比、盈余信息、股利信息对该超常收益有显著的解释能力,因为在大多数公司规模中,账市比、盈余信息的极端值含有股票未来收益的信息,账市比、盈余信息、股利信息对超常收益有显著的边际影响;但成长性和财务风险等年报信息仅对部分公司规模的超常收益有解释能力。     

Recent developments in financial economics and econometrics: An overview

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 Econometrics”. The breadth of coverage is substantial, and includes original research and comprehensive review papers on theoretical, empirical and numerical topics in Financial Economics and Econometrics by leading researchers in finance, financial economics, financial econometrics and financial statistics. The purpose of this special issue on “Recent Developments in Financial Economics and Econometrics” is to highlight several novel and significant developments in financial economics and financial econometrics, specifically dynamic price integration in the global gold market, a conditional single index model with local covariates for detecting and evaluating active management, whether the Basel Accord has improved risk management during the global financial crisis, the role of banking regulation in an economy under credit risk and liquidity shock, separating information maximum likelihood estimation of the integrated volatility and covariance with micro-market noise, stress testing correlation matrices for risk management, whether bank relationship matters for corporate risk taking, with evidence from listed firms in Taiwan, pricing options on stocks denominated in different currencies, with theory and illustrations, EVT and tail-risk modelling, with evidence from market indices and volatility series, the economics of data using simple model free volatility in a high frequency world, arbitrage-free implied volatility surfaces for options on single stock futures, the non-uniform pricing effect of employee stock options using quantile regression, nonlinear dynamics and recurrence plots for detecting financial crisis, how news sentiment impacts asset volatility, with evidence from long memory and regime-switching approaches, quantitative evaluation of contingent capital and its applications, high quantiles estimation with Quasi-PORT and DPOT, with an application to value-at-risk for financial variables, evaluating inflation targeting based on the distribution of inflation and inflation volatility, the size effects of volatility spillovers for firm performance and exchange rates in tourism, forecasting volatility with the realized range in the presence of noise and non-trading, using CARRX models to study factors affecting the volatilities of Asian equity markets, deciphering the Libor and Euribor spreads during the subprime crisis, information transmission between sovereign debt CDS and other financial factors for Latin America, time-varying mixture GARCH models and asymmetric volatility, and diagnostic checking for non-stationary ARMA models with an application to financial data.     

State Prices of Conditional Quantiles: New Evidence on Time Variation in the Pricing Kernel

We develop a set of statistics to represent the option‐implied stochastic discount factor and we apply them to S&P 500 returns between 1990 and 2012. Our statistics, which we call state prices of conditional quantiles (SPOCQ), estimate the market's willingness to pay for insurance against outcomes in various quantiles of the return distribution. By estimating state prices at conditional quantiles, we separate variation in the shape of the pricing kernel from variation in the probability of a particular event. Thus, without imposing strong assumptions about the distribution of returns, we obtain a novel view of pricing‐kernel dynamics. We document six features of SPOCQ for the S&P 500. Most notably, and in contrast to recent studies, we find that the price of downside risk decreases when volatility increases. Under a standard asset pricing model, this result implies that most changes in volatility stem from fluctuations in idiosyncratic risk. Consistent with this interpretation, no known systematic risk factors such as consumer sentiment, liquidity or macroeconomic risk can account for the negative relationship between the price of downside risk and volatility. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modeling volatility in sector index returns with GARCH models using an iterated algorithm

Financial market participants are interested in knowing what events can alter the volatility pattern of financial assets and how unanticipated shocks determine the persistence of volatility over time. The present paper studies these issues by detecting time periods of sudden changes in volatility by using the iterated cumulated sums of squares (ICSS) algorithm. Examining five major sectors from January 1992 to August 2003, we found that accounting for volatility shifts in the standard GARCH model considerably reduces the estimated volatility persistence. Our results have important implications regarding asset pricing, risk management, and portfolio selection. (JEL G110, G120)     

Asset prices with non-permanent shocks to consumption

Most standard asset-pricing models assume that all shocks to consumption are permanent. We relax this assumption and allow also for non-permanent shocks. In our specification, the long-run mean of consumption growth is constant; consumption levels are subject to short-run deviations from their long-run trend. The implications of our model are dramatically different from those obtained in the prior literature. A canonical and parsimonious asset pricing model with CRRA preferences and non-permanent shocks can reproduce the equity premium, high return volatility and return predictability with a coefficient of relative risk aversion below ten. This finding suggests that non-permanent shocks can play an important role in explaining asset pricing puzzles.     

Crises, portfolio flows, and foreign direct investment: An application to Turkey

We analyze how financial and economic crises affect the relation between the components of capital flows and their determinants in an emerging economy. Our results suggest that the composition of capital flows matters, crises can explain the volatility of portfolio flows and foreign direct investment, and modeling them as endogenous breakpoints improves the results considerably. By using data from the Turkish economy, we estimate these breakpoints together with the parameters of the model and find that they correspond to international and domestic crises that hit the country. Although both components are affected by similar crises, direct investment reacts strongly to the domestic crisis, while portfolios flows are more sensitive to global financial conditions. Breaks also have an effect on the significance and sign of determinants of each type of international investment. Evidence indicates changes in all coefficients in both investment types and suggests that analyses assuming parameter constancy lead to misleading results if they ignore the influence of endogenous breaks.     

Aggregate volatility expectations and threshold CAPM

We propose a volatility-based capital asset pricing model (V-CAPM) in which asset betas change discretely with respect to changes in investors’ expectations regarding near-term aggregate volatility. Using a novel measure to proxy uncertainty about expected changes in aggregate volatility, i.e. monthly range of the VIX index (RVIX), we find that portfolio betas change significantly when uncertainty about aggregate volatility expectations is beyond a certain threshold level. Due to changes in their market betas, small and value stocks are perceived as riskier than their big and growth counterparts in bad times, when uncertainty about aggregate volatility expectations is high. The proposed model yields a positive and significant market risk premium during periods when investors do not expect significant uncertainty in near-term aggregate volatility. Our findings support a volatility-based time-varying risk explanation.     

A Primer on Financial Contagion

Abstract.  This paper presents a theoretical framework to highlight possible channels for the international transmission of financial shocks. We first review the different definitions and measures of contagion adopted by the literature. We then use a simple multi-country asset pricing model to classify the main elements of the current debate on contagion and provide a stylized account of how a crisis in one country can spread to the world economy. In particular, the model shows how crises can be transmitted across countries, without assuming ad hoc portfolio management rules or market imperfections. Finally, tracking our classification, we survey the results of the empirical literature on contagion.     

Prices,debt and market structure in an agent-based model of the financial market

We develop an agent-based model in which heterogeneous and boundedly rational agents interact by trading a risky asset at an endogenously set price. Agents are endowed with balance sheets comprising the risky asset as well as cash on the asset side and equity capital as well as debt on the liabilities side. A number of findings emerge when simulating the model: we find that the empirically observable log-normal distribution of bank balance sheet size naturally emerges and that higher levels of leverage lead to a greater inequality among agents. Furthermore, greater leverage increases the frequency of bankruptcies and systemic events. Credit frictions, which we define as the stickiness of debt adjustments, are able to explain a key difference in the relation between leverage and assets observed for different bank types. Lowering credit frictions leads to an increasingly procyclical behavior of leverage, which is typical for investment banks. Nevertheless, the impact of credit frictions on the fragility of the model financial system is complex. Lower frictions do increase the stability of the system most of the time, while systemic events become more probable. In particular, we observe an increasing frequency of severe liquidity crises that can lead to the collapse of the entire model financial system.     

Approximate analytic solution for Asian options with stochastic volatility

The valuation of Asian options is complicated because the arithmetic average of lognormal random variables is no longer lognormal. Furthermore, the stochastic volatility inherent in financial asset prices is easily observed. However, few academic studies consider the pricing and hedging of Asian options with stochastic volatility, despite the popularity of such options. This study extends the work of Hull and White (1987) and integrates the Taylor series expansion technique to derive an approximate analytic solution for Asian options with stochastic volatility. Numerical experiments show that the proposed approximate analytic solution performs favorably and is computationally efficient compared with large-sample simulations. The approximate analytic solution provides a practical approach for pricing and hedging Asian options with stochastic volatility and is both easy to implement and desirable in terms of computing speed.     

Does financial integration affect real exchange rate volatility and cross-country equity market returns correlation?

Existing empirical studies show that financial integration affects the behavior of average excess returns, cross-country equity market returns (EMR) correlations and real exchange rate (RER) volatility. We employ a recently developed two-country model with recursive preferences, frictionless and complete markets and highly correlated long-run innovations to examine whether full financial integration (i.e. full risk-sharing) affects the US-Canada EMR correlation and the US RER volatility, consistently with existing empirical findings. First, full risk-sharing gives rise to a relatively high RER volatility. Second, it induces very strong positive cross-country EMR correlations. Both quantities are higher than those observed in the US-Canada asset pricing data, and increase as the risk-sharing incentive increases. In contrast, “international consumption quantities” are weakly sensitive to changes in the level of aversion to consumption and utility risk.     

Unravelling financial market linkages during crises

An empirical model of multiple asset classes across countries is formulated in a latent factor framework. A special feature of the model is that financial market linkages during periods of financial crises, including spillover and contagion effects, are formally specified. The model also captures a range of common factors including global shocks, country and market shocks, and idiosyncratic shocks. The framework is applied to modelling linkages between currency and equity markets during the East Asian financial crisis of 1997–98. The results provide strong evidence that cross‐market links are important. Spillovers have a relatively larger effect on volatility than contagion, but both are statistically significant. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Speculative behavior and the dynamics of interacting stock markets

We develop a simple agent-based financial market model in which heterogeneous speculators apply technical and fundamental analysis to trade in two different stock markets. Speculators׳ strategy/market selections are repeated at each time step and depend on predisposition effects, herding behavior and market circumstances. Simulations reveal that our model is able to explain a number of nontrivial statistical properties of and between international stock markets, including bubbles and crashes, fat-tailed return distributions, volatility clustering, persistent trading volume, coevolving stock prices and cross-correlated volatilities. Against this background, our model may be deemed to have been validated.     

Pricing VIX options with stochastic volatility and random jumps

This study presents an analytical exact solution for the price of VIX options under stochastic volatility model with simultaneous jumps in the asset price and volatility processes. We shall demonstrate that our new pricing formula can be used to efficiently compute the numerical values of a VIX option. While we also show that the numerical results obtained from our formula consistently match those obtained from Monte Carlo simulation perfectly as a verification of the correctness of our formula, numerical evidence is offered to illustrate that the correctness of the formula proposed in Lin and Chang (J Futur Markets 29(6), 523–543, 2009) is in serious doubt. Moreover, some important and distinct properties of VIX options (e.g., put-call parity, hedging ratios) are also examined and discussed.