What do asset prices have to say about risk appetite and uncertainty?

Implied volatility indices should have information about risk parameters, once they are cleansed of the influence of normal volatility dynamics and macro-economic uncertainty. Building on intuition from the dynamic asset pricing literature, we uncover unobserved risk aversion and fundamental uncertainty from the observed time series of the VIX and the credit spreads while controlling for realized volatility, expectations about the macroeconomic outlook, and interest rates. We apply this methodology to monthly data from both Germany and the US. We find that implied volatilities contain a substantial amount of information regarding risk aversion whereas credit spreads have a lot to say about both risk aversion and uncertainty. Moreover, there is a significant comovement in the German and US risk aversion. JEL Classification:Credit Spread, Economic uncertainty, risk aversion, Time variation in risk and return, Volatility dynamics

Risk, Uncertainty and Monetary Policy

The VIX, the stock market option-based implied volatility, strongly co-moves with measures of the monetary policy stance. When decomposing the VIX into two components, a proxy for risk aversion and expected stock market volatility (“uncertainty”), we find that a lax monetary policy decreases both risk aversion and uncertainty, with the former effect being stronger. The result holds in a structural vector autoregressive framework, controlling for business cycle movements and using a variety of identification schemes for the vector autoregression in general and monetary policy shocks in particular.

views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the

In 2014 all ECB publications feature a motif taken from the €20 banknote. NOTE: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the European Central Bank (ECB). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the ECB. Acknowledgements We thank the Editor, Alok Bhargava, and three anonymous reviewers for useful comments and suggestions that improved the paper. Carlos Garcia de Andoain provided excellent research assistance. Geert Bekaert acknowledges financial support from Netspar. Th

Risk, Uncertainty and Monetary Policy

We document a strong co-movement between the VIX, the stock market option-based implied volatility, and monetary policy. We decompose the VIX into two components, a proxy for risk aversion and expected stock market volatility ("uncertainty"), and analyze their dynamic interactions with monetary policy in a structural vector autoregressive framework. A lax monetary policy decreases risk aversion after about five months. Monetary authorities react to periods of high uncertainty by easing monetary policy. These results are robust to controlling for business cycle movements. We further investigate channels through which monetary policy may affect risk aversion, e.g., through its effects on broad liquidity measures and credit.business cycle; monetary policy; option implied volatility; risk aversion; stock market volatility dynamics; uncertainty