Asymmetric volatility refers to the stylized fact that stock volatility is negatively correlated to stock returns. Traditionally, this phenomenon has been explained by the financial leverage effect. This explanation has recently been challenged in favor of a risk premium based explanation. We develop a new, unlevering approach to document how well financial leverage, rather than size, beta, boo...

Analyzing a large sample of U.S. firms, we show that the asymmetry of stock return volatility is positively related to investor attention and differences of opinion. Using the number of analysts following a given firm to capture attention and the dispersion in analyst forecasts as a common proxy for differences of opinion, we show that the two effects are complementary. Furthermore, the effect ...

This paper provides a new empirical guidance for modeling a skewed and fat-tailed error distribution underlying the traditional GARCH models for equity returns based on empirical findings on Realized Volatility (RV), constructed from the summation of higher-frequency squared (demeaned) returns. Based on an 80-year sample of U.S. daily stock market returns, I find that the distribution of monthl...

Commodity prices tend to be volatile, and volatility itself varies over time. Changes in volatility can affect market variables by directly affecting the marginal value of storage, and by affecting a component of the total marginal cost of production: the opportunity cost of exercising the option to produce the commodity now rather than waiting for more price information. I examine the role of ...

Article history: Received 30 May 2014 Received in revised form 11 January 2015 Accepted 16 March 2015 Available online xxxx Themechanismof risk responses tomarket shocks is considered as stagnant in recent financial literature, whether during normal or stress periods. Since the returns are heteroskedastic, a little considerationwas given to volatility structural breaks and diverse states. In th...

Commodity prices tend to be volatile, and volatility itself varies over time. Changes in volatility can affect market variables by directly affecting the marginal value of storage, and by affecting a component of the total marginal cost of production: the opportunity cost of exercising the option to produce the commodity now rather than waiting for more price information. I examine the role of ...

This paper presents a recombining trinomial tree for valuing real options with changing volatility. The trinomial tree presented in this paper is constructed by simultaneously choosing such a parameterization that sets a judicious state space while having sensible transition probabilities between the nodes. The volatility changes are modeled with the changing transition probabilities while the ...

This note solves the puzzle of estimating degenerate Wishart Autoregressive processes, introduced by Gourieroux, Jasiak and Sufana (2009) to model multivariate stochastic volatility. It derives the asymptotic and empirical properties of the Method of Moment estimator of the Wishart degrees of freedom subject to different stationarity assumptions and specific distributional settings of the under...

This paper provides a simple dynamic optimization model of durable goods inventories. Closed-form solutions are derived in a general equilibrium environment with imperfect information and serially correlated shocks. The model is then applied to scrutinize some popular conjectures regarding the causes of the volatility reduction of GDP since 1984. JEL Classification: E22, E23, E32.

This paper presents an optimal portfolio selection approach based on value at risk (VaR), conditional value at risk (CVaR), worst-case value at risk (WVaR) and partitioned value at risk (PVaR) measures as well as calculating these risk measures. Mathematical solution methods for solving these optimization problems are inadequate and very complex for a portfolio with high number of assets. For t...