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Working Paper
A Tale of Two Option Markets: Pricing Kernels and Volatility Risk
Using prices of both S&P 500 options and recently introduced VIX options, we study asset pricing implications of volatility risk. While pointing out the joint pricing kernel is not identified nonparametrically, we propose model-free estimates of marginal pricing kernels of the market return and volatility conditional on the VIX. We find that the pricing kernel of market return exhibits a decreasing pattern given either a high or low VIX level, whereas the unconditional estimates present a U-shape. Hence, stochastic volatility is the key state variable responsible for the U-shape puzzle ...