Download or read book Essays on Volatility Measurement Model Combination and Asset Pricing written by Joachim Löbb and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Empirical Asset Pricing written by Gang Li and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation contains three essays on empirical asset pricing. In the first essay, I study the relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and expected returns of risky assets. I find that when the true asset pricing model cannot be identified, the idiosyncratic volatility obtained from a misspecified model contains information regarding the hedge portfolio in Merton's (1973) ICAPM. Empirically, I find that from 1815 to 2018, a combination of equal-weighted idiosyncratic volatility (EWIV) and value-weighted idiosyncratic volatility (VWIV) can strongly forecast stock market returns over short- and long-term horizons. Furthermore, EWIV and VWIV jointly can explain the cross-section of average stock returns. I show that the combination of EWIV and VWIV is a proxy for the conditional covariance risk in the ICAPM. The deduction also provides new insights concerning the tail risk measure proposed by Kelly and Jiang (2014). The second essay is a joint work with Bing Han. We propose a new and robust predictor of stock market returns and real economic activities based on information from equity options. We aggregate the difference in implied volatilities of at-the-money call and put options across stocks and find that the aggregate implied volatility spread (IVS) is significantly and positively related to future stock market returns. We attribute the predictive power to common informed trading in equity options instead of time-varying risk premium. The third essay, coauthored with Yoontae Jeon and Raymond Kan, studies the expected option return under an extended Black-Scholes model that incorporates the presence of stock return autocorrelation. We show that expected returns of both call and put options are increasing functions of return autocorrelation coefficient of the underlying stock. We find strong empirical evidence from the cross-section of average returns of equity options to support this prediction. Average returns of calls and puts as well as straddle returns all show monotonically increasing relationship with the degree of underlying stock's return autocorrelation coefficient. We also examine how the information on stock return autocorrelation helps investors to improve the out-of-sample performance of their portfolios.

Download or read book Three Essays on Volatility Measurement and Modeling with Price Limits written by Rui Gao and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation studies volatility measurement and modeling issues when asset prices are subject to price limits based on Bayesian approaches. Two types of estimators are developed to consistently estimate integrated volatility in the presence of price limits. One is a realized volatility type estimator, but using both realized asset prices and simulated asset prices. The other is a discrete sample analogue of integrated volatility using posterior samples of the latent volatility states. These two types of estimators are first constructed based on the simple log-stochastic volatility model in Chapter 2. The simple log-stochastic volatility framework is extended in Chapter 3 to incorporate correlated innovations and further extended in Chapter 4 to accommodate jumps and fat-tailed innovations. For each framework, a MCMC algorithm is designed to simulate the unobserved asset prices, model parameters and latent states. Performances of both type estimators are also examined using simulations under each framework. Applications to Chinese stock markets are also provided.

Download or read book Essays on Volatility Risk Asset Returns and Consumption based Asset Pricing written by Young Il Kim and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: My dissertation addresses two main issues regarding asset returns: econometric modeling of asset returns in chapters 2 and 3 and puzzling features of the standard consumption-based asset pricing model (C-CAPM) in chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 2 develops a new theoretical derivation for the GARCH-skew-t model as a mixture distribution of normal and inverted-chi-square in order to represent the three important stylized facts of financial data: volatility clustering, skewness and thick-tails. The GARCH-skew-t is same as the GARCH-t model if the skewness parameter is shut-off. The GARCH-skew-t is applied to U.S. excess stock market returns, and the equity premium is computed based on the estimated model. It is shown that skewness and kurtosis can have significant effect on the equity premium and that with sufficiently negatively skewed distribution of the excess returns, a finite equity premium can be assured, contrary to the case of the Student t in which an infinite equity premium arises. Chapter 3 provides a new empirical guidance for modeling a skewed and thick-tailed error distribution along with GARCH effects based on the theoretical derivation for the GARCH-skew-t model and empirical findings on the Realized Volatility (RV) measure, constructed from the summation of higher frequency squared (demeaned) returns. Based on an 80-year sample of U.S. daily stock market returns, it is found that the distribution of monthly RV conditional on past returns is approximately the inverted-chi-square while monthly market returns, conditional on RV and past returns are normally distributed with RV in both mean and variance. These empirical findings serve as the building blocks underlying the GARCH-skew-t model. Thus, the findings provide a new empirical justification for the GARCH-skew-t modeling of equity returns. Moreover, the implied GARCH-skew-t model accurately represents the three important stylized facts for equity returns. Chapter 4 provides a possible solution to asset return puzzles such as high equity premium and low riskfree rate based on parameter uncertainty. It is shown that parameter uncertainty underlying the data generating process can lead to a negatively skewed and thick-tailed distribution that can explain most of the high equity premium and low riskfree rate even with the degree of risk aversion below 10 in the CRRA utility function. Chapter 5 investigates a possible link between stock market volatility and macroeconomic risk. This chapter studies why U.S. stock market volatility has not changed much during the "great moderation" era of the 1980s in contrast to the prediction made by the standard C-CAPM. A new model is developed such that aggregate consumption is decomposed into stock and non-stock source of income so that stock dividends are a small part of consumption. This new model predicts that the great moderation of macroeconomic risk must have originated from declining volatility of shocks to the relatively large non-stock factor of production while shocks to the relatively small stock assets have been persistently volatile during the moderation era. Furthermore, the model shows that the systematic risk of holding equity is positively associated with the stock share of total wealth.

Download or read book Essays on Volatility Risk Premia in Asset Pricing written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis contains two essays. In the first essay, we investigate the impact of time varying volatility of consumption growth on the cross-section and time-series of equity returns. While many papers test consumption-based pricing models using the first moment of consumption growth, less is known about how the time-variation of consumption growth volatility affects asset prices. In a model with recursive preferences and unobservable conditional mean and volatility of consumption growth, the representative agent's estimates of conditional moments of consumption growth affect excess returns. Empirically, we find that estimated consumption volatility is a priced source of risk, and exposure to it predicts future returns in the cross-section. Consumption volatility is also a strong predictor of aggregate quarterly excess returns in the time-series. The estimated negative price of risk together with the evidence on equity premium predictability suggest that the elasticity of intertemporal substitution of the representative agent is greater than unity, a finding that contributes to a long standing debate in the literature. In the second essay, I present a simple model to show that if agents face binding portfolio constraints, stocks with high volatility in states of low market returns demand a premium beyond the one implied by systematic risks. Assets whose volatility positively covaries with market volatility also have high expected returns. Both effects of this idiosyncratic volatility risk premium are strongest for assets that face more binding trading restrictions. Unlike the prior empirical literature that obtains mixed results when focusing on the level of idiosyncratic volatility, I investigate the dynamic behavior of idiosyncratic volatility and find strong support for my predictions. Comovement of innovations of idiosyncratic volatility with market returns negatively predicts returns for trading restricted stocks relative to unrestricted stocks, and comovement.

Download or read book Essays in Asset Pricing and Volatility Risk written by Gill Segal and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the third chapter ("From Private-Belief Formation to Aggregate-Vol Oscillation") I propose a model that relies on learning and informational asymmetry, for the endogenous amplification of the conditional volatility in macro aggregates and of cross-sectional dispersion during economic slowdowns. The model quantitatively matches the fluctuations in the conditional volatility of macroeconomic growth rates, while generating realistic real business-cycle moments. Consistently with the data, shifts in the correlation structure between firms are an important source of aggregate volatility fluctuations. Cross-firm correlations rise in downturns due to a higher weight that firms place on public information, which causes their beliefs and policies to comove more strongly.

Download or read book Empirical Asset Pricing written by Wayne Ferson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the theory and methods of empirical asset pricing, integrating classical foundations with recent developments. This book offers a comprehensive advanced introduction to asset pricing, the study of models for the prices and returns of various securities. The focus is empirical, emphasizing how the models relate to the data. The book offers a uniquely integrated treatment, combining classical foundations with more recent developments in the literature and relating some of the material to applications in investment management. It covers the theory of empirical asset pricing, the main empirical methods, and a range of applied topics. The book introduces the theory of empirical asset pricing through three main paradigms: mean variance analysis, stochastic discount factors, and beta pricing models. It describes empirical methods, beginning with the generalized method of moments (GMM) and viewing other methods as special cases of GMM; offers a comprehensive review of fund performance evaluation; and presents selected applied topics, including a substantial chapter on predictability in asset markets that covers predicting the level of returns, volatility and higher moments, and predicting cross-sectional differences in returns. Other chapters cover production-based asset pricing, long-run risk models, the Campbell-Shiller approximation, the debate on covariance versus characteristics, and the relation of volatility to the cross-section of stock returns. An extensive reference section captures the current state of the field. The book is intended for use by graduate students in finance and economics; it can also serve as a reference for professionals.

Download or read book Essays in Asset Pricing and Volatility Econometrics written by Emil N. Siriwardane and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Asset Pricing and Volatility Derivatives written by Clemens Völkert and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Asset Pricing Models written by Yan Li and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My dissertation contains three chapters. Chapter one proposes a nonparametric method to evaluate the performance of a conditional factor model in explaining the cross section of stock returns. There are two tests: one is based on the individual pricing error of a conditional model and the other is based on the average pricing error. Empirical results show that for valueweighted portfolios, the conditional CAPM explains none of the asset-pricing anomalies, while the conditional Fama-French three-factor model is able to account for the size effect, and it also helps to explain the value effect and the momentum effect. From a statistical point of view, a conditional model always beats a conditional one because it is closer to the true data-generating process. Chapter two proposes a general equilibrium model to study the implications of prospect theory for individual trading, security prices and trading volume. Its main finding is that different components of prospect theory make different predictions. The concavity/convexity of the value function drives a disposition effect, which in turn leads to momentum in the cross-section of stock returns and a positive correlation between returns and volumes. On the other hand, loss aversion predicts exactly the opposite, namely a reversed disposition effect and reversal in the cross-section of stock returns, as well as a negative correlation between returns and volumes. In a calibrated economy, when prospect theory preference parameters are set at the values estimated by the previous studies, our model can generate price momentum of up to 7% on an annual basis. Chapter three studies the role of aggregate dividend volatility in asset prices. In the model, narrow-framing investors are loss averse over fluctuations in the value of their financial wealth. Persistent dividend volatility indicates persistent fluctuation in their financial wealth and makes stocks undesirable. It helps to explain the salient feature of the stock market including the high mean, excess volatility, and predictability of stock returns while maintaining a low and stable risk-free rate. Consistent with the data, stock returns have a low correlation with consumption growth, and Sharpe ratios are time-varying.

Download or read book Information Asset Pricing and Market Volatility written by Yexiao Xu and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Two Essays on the Impact of Idiosyncratic Risk on Asset Returns written by Jie Cao and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dissertation, I explore the impact of idiosyncratic risk on asset returns. The first essay examines how idiosyncratic risk affects the cross-section of stock returns. I use an exponential GARCH model to forecast expected idiosyncratic volatility and employ a combination of the size effect, value premium, return momentum and short-term reversal to measure relative mispricing. I find that stock returns monotonically increase in idiosyncratic risk for relatively undervalued stocks and monotonically decrease in idiosyncratic risk for relatively overvalued stocks. This phenomenon is robust to various subsamples and industries, and cannot be explained by risk factors or firm characteristics. Further, transaction costs, short-sale constraints and information uncertainty cannot account for the role of idiosyncratic risk. Overall, these findings are consistent with the limits of arbitrage arguments and demonstrate the importance of idiosyncratic risk as an arbitrage cost. The second essay studies the cross-sectional determinants of delta-hedged stock option returns with an emphasis on the pricing of volatility risk. We find that the average delta-hedged option returns are significantly negative for most stocks, and they decrease monotonically with both total and idiosyncratic volatility of the underlying stock. Our results are robust and cannot be explained by the Fama-French factors, market volatility risk, jump risk, or the effect of past stock return and volatility-related option mispricing. Our results strongly support a negative market price of volatility risk specification that is proportional to the volatility level. Reflecting this volatility risk premium, writing covered calls on high volatility stocks on average earns about 2% more per month than selling covered calls on low volatility stocks. This spread is higher when it is more difficult to arbitrage between stock and option.

Download or read book Three Essays on the Volatility of Asset Prices written by Dal-Hee Lee and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on the Specification Testing for Dynamic Asset Pricing Models written by Jaeho Yun and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three essays on the subjects of specification testing on dynamic asset pricing models. In the first essay (with Yongmiao Hong), "A Simulation Test for Continuous-Time Models," we propose a simulation method to implement Hong and Li's (2005) transition density-based test for continuous-time models. The idea is to simulate a sequence of dynamic probability integral transforms, which is the key ingredient of Hong and Li's (2005) test. The proposed procedure is generally applicable whether or not the transition density of a continuous-time model has a closed form and is simple and computationally inexpensive. A Monte Carlo study shows that the proposed simulation test has very similar sizes and powers to the original Hong and Li's (2005) test. Furthermore, the performance of the simulation test is robust to the choice of the number of simulation iterations and the number of discretization steps between adjacent observations. In the second essay (with Yongmiao Hong), "A Specification Test for Stock Return Models," we propose a simulation-based specification testing method applicable to stochastic volatility models, based on Hong and Li (2005) and Johannes et al. (2008). We approximate a dynamic probability integral transform in Hong and Li' s (2005) density forecasting test, via the particle filters proposed by Johannes et al. (2008). With the proposed testing method, we conduct a comprehensive empirical study on some popular stock return models, such as the GARCH and stochastic volatility models, using the S&P 500 index returns. Our empirical analysis shows that all models are misspecified in terms of density forecast. Among models considered, however, the stochastic volatility models perform relatively well in both in- and out-of-sample. We also find that modeling the leverage effect provides a substantial improvement in the log stochastic volatility models. Our value-at-risk performance analysis results also support stochastic volatility models rather than GARCH models. In the third essay (with Yongmiao Hong), "Option Pricing and Density Forecast Performances of the Affine Jump Diffusion Models: the Role of Time-Varying Jump Risk Premia," we investigate out-of-sample option pricing and density forecast performances for the affine jump diffusion (AJD) models, using the S&P 500 stock index and the associated option contracts. In particular, we examine the role of time-varying jump risk premia in the AJD specifications. For comparison purposes, nonlinear asymmetric GARCH models are also considered. To evaluate density forecasting performances, we extend Hong and Li's (2005) specification testing method to be applicable to the famous AJD class of models, whether or not model-implied spot volatilities are available. For either case, we develop (i) the Fourier inversion of the closed-form conditional characteristic function and (ii) the Monte Carlo integration based on the particle filters proposed by Johannes et al. (2008). Our empirical analysis shows strong evidence in favor of time-varying jump risk premia in pricing cross-sectional options over time. However, for density forecasting performances, we could not find an AJD specification that successfully reconcile the dynamics implied by both time-series and options data.

Download or read book Essays on asset liabilty modelling written by David Frederik Schrager and published by Rozenberg Publishers. This book was released on 2007 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Forecasting Volatility in the Financial Markets written by John L. Knight and published by Butterworth-Heinemann. This book was released on 2002 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text assumes that the reader has a firm grounding in the key principles and methods of understanding volatility measurement and builds on that knowledge to detail cutting edge modeling and forecasting techniques. It then uses a technical survey to explain the different ways to measure risk and define the different models of volatility and return.

Download or read book Essays on Idiosyncratic Volatility and Asset Pricing written by Fatma Sonmez Saryal and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thesis, I study three aspects of idiosyncratic volatility. First, I examine the relation between idiosyncratic volatility and future stock returns. Next, I examine the share price effect and its interaction with the idiosyncratic volatility on stock returns. Finally, I examine the time series pattern of monthly aggregate monthly idiosyncratic volatility. In the first chapter, I examine the relation between idiosyncratic volatility and future stock returns. In their paper, Ang, Hodrick, Xing, and Zhang [AHXZ (2006)] show that idiosyncratic volatility is inversely related to future stock returns: low idiosyncratic volatility stocks earn higher returns than do high idiosyncratic volatility stocks. The main contribution of this paper is to provide evidence that it is the month to month changes in idiosyncratic volatility that produce AHXZ's results. More specifically, a portfolio of stocks that move from Quintile 1 (low idiosyncratic volatility) to Quintile 5 (high idiosyncratic volatility) earns an average risk-adjusted return of 5.64% per month in the month of the change. Whereas, a portfolio of stocks that move from the highest to the lowest idiosyncratic volatility quintiles earns -0.94% per month in the month of the change. Eliminating all firm-month observations with idiosyncratic volatility quintile changes, I find the opposite results to AHXZ: it is persistently low idiosyncratic volatility stocks that earn lower returns than do persistently high idiosyncratic volatility stocks. I find that many of the extreme changes in idiosyncratic volatility are related to business events. In general, the pattern usually observed is that an announcement or an event increases uncertainty about a stock and hence, its idiosyncratic volatility increases. After the event, uncertainty is resolved and the stock returns to a lower idiosyncratic volatility quintile. In the second chapter, I examine how the level of the share price interacts with idiosyncratic volatility to affect future stock returns. Ignoring transaction costs, a trading strategy that is long high-priced and short low-priced stocks earns positive abnormal returns with respect to the Fama-French (1992) three factor model. However, the observed positive abnormal returns are less significant if momentum is taken into account via the Carhart (1997) four factor model. Also the relation between idiosyncratic volatility and future stock returns differs for price sorted portfolios: it is negative for low and mid-priced stocks but positive for high-priced ones. These results are robust for low and-mid-priced stocks even after momentum is included. However, the positive relation for high-priced stocks disappears due to relatively large loadings on momentum for high idiosyncratic volatility stocks. I also show that skewness and momentum are significant determinants of idiosyncratic volatility for low-priced stocks and high-priced stocks respectively. One implication is that the importance of idiosyncratic volatility for future stock returns may in part be due its role as a disguised risk factor: either for momentum for high-priced stocks and skewness for low and mid-priced stocks. In the third chapter, I investigate the time series pattern of aggregate monthly idiosyncratic volatility. It has been shown that new riskier listings in the US stock markets are a reason for the increase in idiosyncratic volatility during the period 1963-2004. First, I show that this is more pronounced for Nasdaq new listings. Second, I show that for Nasdaq, prior to 1994 low-priced new listings became riskier, whereas during the internet bubble period it is the higher-priced listings that became riskier. Third, I show that institutional holdings have increased over time and have had a different impact on each new listing group: a negative for pre-1994 listings and a positive impact for post-1994 listings. Hence, I conclude that the observed time-series pattern of idiosyncratic volatility is a result of the changing nature of Nasdaq's investor clientele.