What\u27s Vol Got to Do With It

Uncertainty plays a key role in economics, finance, and decision sciences. Financial markets, in particular derivative markets, provide fertile ground for understanding how perceptions of economic uncertainty and cash-flow risk manifest themselves in asset prices. We demonstrate that the variance premium, defined as the difference between the squared VIX index and expected realized variance, captures attitudes toward uncertainty. We show conditions under which the variance premium displays significant time variation and return predictability. A calibrated, generalized long-run risks model generates a variance premium with time variation and return predictability that is consistent with the data, while simultaneously matching the levels and volatilities of the market return and risk-free rate. Our evidence indicates an important role for transient non-Gaussian shocks to fundamentals that affect agents\u27 views of economic uncertainty and prices

Risk Choice Under High-Water Marks

I provide a closed-form solution to the optimal dynamic risk choice of a fund man- ager who is compensated under a high-water mark contract. The manager's optimal risk choice varies with the distance between the fund's asset value and its high-water mark. Negative returns increase the manager's eective risk aversion (`de-leveraging') when the value of his outside option is low, termination is `strict', or management fees are high, and decrease his eective risk aversion (`gambling') otherwise. I show that in the absence of limits on risk taking, it is never optimal for a manager to walk away. When there are risk limits, walk-away can be optimal following losses

A Pyrrhic Victory? Bank Bailouts and Sovereign Credit Risk

We show that nancial sector bailouts and sovereign credit risk are intimately linked. A bailout benets the economy by ameliorating the under-investment problem of the nancial sector. However, increasing taxation of the non-nancial sector to fund the bailout may be inecient since it weakens its incentive to invest, decreasing growth. Instead, the sovereign may choose to fund the bailout by diluting existing government bondholders, resulting in a deterioration of the sovereign's creditworthiness. This deterioration feeds back to the nancial sector, reducing the value of its guarantees and existing bond holdings as well as increasing its sensitivity to future sovereign shocks. We provide empirical evidence for this two-way feedback between nancial and sovereign credit risk using data on the credit default swaps (CDS) of the Eurozone countries and their banks for 2007-11. We show that the announcement of nancial sector bailouts was associated with an immediate, unprecedented widening of sovereign CDS spreads and narrowing of bank CDS spreads; however, post-bailouts there emerged a signi- cant co-movement between bank CDS and sovereign CDS, even after controlling for banks' equity performance, the latter being consistent with an eect of the quality of sovereign guarantees on bank credit risk

A Pyrrhic Victory? - Bank Bailouts and Sovereign Credit Risk

We show that financial sector bailouts and sovereign credit risk are intimately linked. A bailout benefits the economy by ameliorating the under-investment problem of the financial sector. However, increasing taxation of the non-financial sector to fund the bailout may be inefficient since it weakens its incentive to invest, decreasing growth. Instead, the sovereign may choose to fund the bailout by diluting existing government bondholders, resulting in a deterioration of the sovereign's creditworthiness. This deterioration feeds back onto the financial sector, reducing the value of its guarantees and existing bond holdings and increasing its sensitivity to future sovereign shocks. We provide empirical evidence for this two-way feedback between financial and sovereign credit risk using data on the credit default swaps (CDS) of the Eurozone countries for 2007-10. We show that the announcement of financial sector bailouts was associated with an immediate, unprecedented widening of sovereign CDS spreads and narrowing of bank CDS spreads; however, post-bailouts there emerged a significant co-movement between bank CDS and sovereign CDS, even after controlling for banks' equity performance, the latter being consistent with an effect of the quality of sovereign guarantees on bank credit risk.