Identifying Volatility Risk Premia from Fixed Income Asian Options

Assessing the compensation for volatility risk implicit in interest rate derivatives

Volatility Feedback and Risk Premium in GARCH Models with Generalized Hyperbolic Distributions

The Cross-Sectional Variation of Volatility Risk Premia

Comovement and Volatility Risk Premia

We discover a new currency strategy with highly desirable return and diversification properties, which uses the predictive ability of currency volatility risk premia for currency returns. The volatility risk premium—the difference between expected realized volatility and model-free implied volatility—reflects the costs of insuring against currency volatility fluctuations. The strategy sells high insurance-cost currencies and buys low insurance-cost currencies. A distinctive feature of the strategy’s returns is that they are mainly generated by movements in spot exchange rates instead of interest rate differentials. We explore explanations for the profitability of the strategy, which cannot be understood using traditional risk factors.

We use a novel pricing model to filter times series of diffusive volatility and jump intensity from S&P 500 index options. These two measures capture the ex-ante risk assessed by investors. We find that both components of risk vary substantially over time, are quite persistent, and correlate with each other and with the stock index. Using a simple general equilibrium model with a representative investor, we translate the filtered measures of ex-ante risk into an ex-ante risk premium. We find that the average premium that compensates the investor for the risks implicit in option prices, 10.1 percent, is about twice the premium required to compensate the same investor for the realized volatility, 5.8 percent. Moreover, the ex-ante equity premium that we uncover is highly volatile, with values between 2 and 32 percent. The component of the premium that corresponds to the jump risk varies between 0 and 12 percent.

As the latest addition to the basic equity smart beta factors, the volatility risk premium (VRP) has become an attractive potential source of additional returns for investors. The VRP is generally defined as the difference between the implied volatility of options and the subsequently realized volatility. However, few VRP-based investment products are available that both deliver consistent returns and are low cost. The focus of this article is how investors can incorporate the VRP into typical portfolios, exemplified by a balanced 60/40 portfolio and an equal-weight, multi-asset diversified portfolio. The article explores two different methods, the dedicated VRP construct (long only) and the overlay VRP construct (long–short) and concludes that both methods can potentially enhance investors’ portfolio returns without significantly altering the portfolio’s risk profile because the VRP is an attractive and traditionally untapped source of returns that has exhibited low correlations with traditional risk premiums. The conclusions drawn in the article may be applicable to the task of incorporating other smart beta factors into portfolios.

We use data for 24 European countries, spanning from 1994 to 2015, in order to examine how changes in macroeconomic conditions influence country risk premium volatility proxied by sovereign spreads variance. In the first part of the empirical analysis, we estimate the univariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model in order to obtain the conditional variance of sovereign bond spreads. We show that an increase in this variance coincides with economic and financial crisis occurring either in the country or globally. In the second part of the empirical analysis, we estimate the panel vector autoregression (panel VAR) model in order to model the interplay between macroeconomic fundamentals (inflation, output gap, public debt and interest rates) and the country’s risk premium volatility. We show that overheating of the economy, along with an unexpected increase in public debt, inflation and interest rates, increase the country’s risk premium volatility. We also show that a sudden increase in the country´s risk premium volatility depresses the economy, exerts deflationary pressures on consumer prices, and is followed by a strong and permanent increase in public debt.

Global Currency Misalignments, Crash Sensitivity, and Downside Insurance Costs

Dynamic estimation of volatility risk premia and investor risk aversion from option-implied and realized volatilities

Dynamic Estimation of Volatility Risk Premia and Investor Risk Aversion from Option-Implied and Realized Volatilities

Volatility is a very important variable in financial research, and so is the volatility risk premium. This article constructs upward, downward and overall volatility risk premiums based on the daily data of Shanghai 50 ETF options and the 5-minute high-frequency data of the Shanghai 50 Index from February 9, 2015 to February 28, 2020. The quantile regression method is used to predict the return of the Shanghai 50 Index in the next 14 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 180 days, 270 days, and 360 days. Our study finds that the 0.05 quantile has the best prediction effect, and the overall volatility risk premium is better than the upward and downward volatility risk premiums in most of the time, which shows overall risk premium has more information than others.

This paper investigates the relation between the conditional expected equity risk premium and the slope of the term structure of interest rates. Theoretically, these variables are linked, the relation may be nonlinear, and negative risk premiums are consistent with equilibrium. Given these implications, we employ a nonparametric estimation technique to document the empirical relation between the risk premium and the slope of the term structure using almost two hundred years of data. Of particular interest, the risk premium is increasing in the term structure slope; however, for either small or negative slopes, the risk premium is much more sensitive to changes in interest rates. In addition, the empirical results imply negative expected equity risk premiums for some inverted term structures. Finally, variations in the risk premium do not appear to be related to variations in the variance of equity returns. We illustrate these features in a stylized consumption-based model, and provide the economic intuition behind the results.

Cross-Section of Option Returns and the Volatility Risk Premium

Recent events have highlighted the potential importance of nonlinear efiects of flscal variables (notably debt and deflcits) on interest rates: While in times when government solvency is not a concern the standard crowding-out efiects are of moderate magnitude, in times when default risk becomes an issue the interest rate efiects can become very large. This paper provides new evidence on the magnitude of these efiects. For the case when default risk is not a concern, it uses an arbitrage-free term structure model to estimate the dynamic efiects of flscal policy shocks on interest rates along the entire maturity spectrum. For the case when default risk becomes a concern (thereby violating a central assumption of the term structure model), I present evidence based on EMU government bond spread regressions on time-varying efiects of national flscal policies on spreads as well as the time-varying sensitivity of yield spreads to international risk aversion as a function of the state of flscal policy. JEL classiflcation: E6, H6.