Risk premia and volatilities in a nonlinear term structure model

We introduce a reduced-form term structure model with closed-form solutions for yields where the short rate and market prices of risk are nonlinear functions of Gaussian state variables. The nonlinear model with three factors matches the time-variation in expected excess returns and yield volatilities of U.S. Treasury bonds from 1961 to 2014. Yields and their variances depend on only three factors, yet the model exhibits features consistent with unspanned risk premia (URP) and unspanned stochastic volatility (USV)

Asset prices in an ambiguous economy

Models with ambiguity averse preferences have the potential to explain some pricing anomalies on financial markets. However, the models used in applications make additional assumptions, beyond ambiguity aversion, on the structure of the investor's preferences. Therefore, it is not clear how to disentangle the effect of ambiguity aversion from other features of preferences on equilibrium prices. This paper offers a general theory of asset pricing assuming only ambiguity aversion. Price indeterminacy may result in equilibrium when preferences are not smooth. A set of priors, which is identifiable in all the models used in applications, contains the relevant information to price assets. Ambiguity enriches the standard pricing formula by an additional stochastic discount factor and we calculate its explicit form for various models