G13 - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing

• Estimating the Policy Rule from Money Market Rates when Target Rate Changes Are Lumpy

  Staff Working Paper 2012-41 Jean-Sébastien Fontaine

  Most central banks effect changes to their target or policy rate in discrete increments (e.g., multiples of 0.25%) following public announcements on scheduled dates. Still, for most applications, researchers rely on the assumption that the policy rate changes linearly with economic conditions and they do not distinguish between dates with and without scheduled announcements.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Financial markets, Interest rates JEL Code(s): E, E4, E43, E44, E47, G, G1, G12, G13

• The Economic Value of Realized Volatility: Using High-Frequency Returns for Option Valuation

  Staff Working Paper 2012-34 Peter Christoffersen, Bruno Feunou, Kris Jacobs, Nour Meddahi

  Many studies have documented that daily realized volatility estimates based on intraday returns provide volatility forecasts that are superior to forecasts constructed from daily returns only. We investigate whether these forecasting improvements translate into economic value added.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): G, G1, G13

• Risk Premium, Variance Premium and the Maturity Structure of Uncertainty

  Staff Working Paper 2012-11 Bruno Feunou, Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, Abderrahim Taamouti, Roméo Tedongap

  Expected returns vary when investors face time-varying investment opportunities. Long-run risk models (Bansal and Yaron 2004) and no-arbitrage affine models (Duffie, Pan, and Singleton 2000) emphasize sources of risk that are not observable to the econometrician.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Financial services JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G13