Gonzalo Rubio

• Universidad Cardenal Herrera CEU

Macro-finance asset pricing models provide a rationale for connectedness dynamics between equity and Treasury risk-neutral volatilities. In this paper, we study the total and directional connectedness, in the sense of spillover effects, between risk-neutral volatilities from the equity and Treasury markets. In addition, we analyze the economic and...

This analysis addressed the potential systemic effects of guarantee requirements by central counterparties. Using data from the Spanish BME and German Eurex central clearing counterparties and controlling for tail risk and monetary and real activity variables, we found a significant, positive, and robust relationship between the guarantees required...

Institutional investors often have to decide which strategy to use across international business cycles. This is especially important during economic and financial crises. The exogenous nature of the outbreak of the dramatic COVID-19 crisis represents a unique opportunity to understand the performance of risk factors during severe economic times ac...

This paper shows how risk aversion and economic uncertainty affect the expected market risk premium. Under a habit preference macro-finance model with time-varying risk aversion, we show a significant amplifying effect of risk aversion on the expected market risk premium over and above economic uncertainty shocks. Although our full sample period is...

This research analyzes the causes of the quality premium, one of the most intriguing and successful investment strategies in equity markets. While previous research has argued that psychological biases explain the performance of the quality minus junk factor, our paper analyzes a leverage constraint explanation within a rational risk-based framewor...

This paper analyzes the factor structure and cross-sectional variability of a set of expected excess returns extracted from option prices and a non-parametric and out-of-sample stochastic discount factor. We argue that the existing potential segmentation between the equity and option markets makes it advisable to avoid using only option prices to e...

How do uncertainty and risk aversion affect the behavior of investment-style factors? We argue that a significant channel through which both uncertainty and risk aversion impact aggregate risk factors is the exposure of factor returns to real activity. We analyze this issue using mixed data sampling decomposition of the sensitivity of factor return...

This paper shows that the quality minus junk (QMJ) factor and quality-sorted portfolios contain information about funding liquidity crisis. There is a strong and positive relation between the behavior of the QMJ factor and the intensity of funding liquidity crises. This is the case even if we control for the profitability factor, the St. Louis Fed...

This paper employs equity (VIX) and Treasury (MOVE) risk‐neutral volatilities to assess their relative forecasting performance with respect to future real activity, stock and Treasury excess returns, and aggregate risk factors. The in‐sample evidence suggests that the square of VIX tends to dominate the square of MOVE. Out‐of‐sample predictive anal...

This paper proposes the mixed frequency conditional beta. We employ the MIDAS framework to estimate market betas as a weighted average of a high and low frequency components. Then, we analyze the macroeconomic determinants of stock market betas and the counter- or pro-cyclicality of betas across well-known portfolio sorts. The surplus consumption r...

Following the recent literature on intermediary asset pricing models, this paper argues that the marginal utility of wealth of financial intermediaries can be used to generate enough volatility and counter-cyclicality on the recursive preference-based stochastic discount factor. Hence, a dynamic econometric strategy of an asset pricing model with t...

Contrary to the standard practice of using past average realized returns when testing asset pricing models, this paper analyzes the factor structure and the cross-sectional variability of expected returns. We show that the first two principal components explain 99.5% of the variability of (lower bound) expected returns. Quality, funding illiquidity...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the simultaneous cross-sectional variation of return and volatility risk premia. Independently of the model specification employed, the estimated risk premium associated with the default premium beta is always positive and statistically different from zero. Moreover, the risk premium of the market volatility...

This paper studies the relation between teaching quality and research productivity using a detailed database for students in higher education. In order to measure teaching quality, we employ a version of the value-added methodology which uses future performance of students to make inferences about the current teaching quality of their professors. W...

This paper analyzes the cross-sectional and time-series behavior of the volatility risk premia betas at the portfolio level. These betas show a monotonic relation with respect to the magnitude of the volatility risk premium payoffs. Moreover, portfolio conditional volatility risk premia betas increase significantly in recessions. In particular, the...

This paper proposes the mixed frequency conditional beta. We employ the MIDAS framework to decompose market betas into high and low frequency components. The total mixed frequency beta is the weighted average of these two components. Then, we analyze the macroeconomic determinants of stock market betas, and the counter or pro-cyclicality of betas a...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the simultaneous cross-sectional variation of average equity and volatility risk premia. Independently of the model specification employed, the estimated risk premium associated with the default premium beta is always positive and statistically different from zero. Moreover, the risk premium of the market vol...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the cross-sectional variation of the average volatility risk premia for a representative set of portfolios sorted by volatility risk premium beta. The market volatility risk premium and, especially, the default premium are shown to be key risk factors in the cross-sectional variation of average volatility ris...

This paper analyzes the risk of trading in the illiquid part of the credit default swap (CDS) term structure, especially when investors cannot unwind their positions due to exogenous liquidity shocks. To assess the size of this illiquidity premium, we construct credit-quality-sorted portfolios of CDS spreads. The illiquidity and default risk premia...

This paper derives closed-form expressions for consumption-based stochastic discount factors adjusted by market-wide illiquidity shocks, considering both contemporaneous and ultimate consumption risk. We find that market-wide illiquidity risk is important for pricing risky assets under alternative preference specifications, although it is especiall...

This paper analyzes the relationship between the volatility of corporate bond returns and standard financial and macroeconomic indicators reflecting the state of the economy. We employ the GARCH-MIDAS multiplicative two-component model of volatility that distinguishes the short-term dynamics from the long-run component of volatility. Both the in-sa...

We analyze the relevance of adjustment costs in keeping Spanish public firms away from their target leverage. We argue that firm's cash flow outcomes determine the importance of the adjustment costs on capital structure changes. Then, we estimate capital structure adjustment speeds across three different cash flow realizations. We report that durin...

Nuestra evidencia sugiere que las empresas cotizadas españolas realizan un lento ajuste hacia su estructura de capital objetivo. La empresa típica reduce aproximadamente, cada año, un quinto de la distancia existente entre su ratio de endeudamiento y su nivel óptimo de deuda. Este resultado parece contrario a la evidencia previa existente para empr...

This paper studies the determinants of the variance risk premium and concludes on the hedging possibilities offered by variance swaps. We start by showing that the variance risk premium responds to changes in higher order moments of the distribution of market returns. But the uncertainty that determines the variance risk premium - the fear by inves...

Previous research on the effects of constraints to take unbounded positions in risky financial assets shows that, under the logarithmic utility function, multiplicity of equilibrium may emerge. This paper shows that this result is robust to either constant, decreasing or increasing relative risk aversion obtained under the generalized logarithmic u...

This article shows how to extract future real activity information from optimally combined size-sorted portfolios. In particular, we analyze the capacity of the size-based model-free Hansen–Jagannathan volatility bound to predict future economic growth. We find that the volatility bound is a powerful in-sample and out-of-sample predictor of future...

We analyze the relevance of adjustment costs in keeping Spanish public firms away from their target leverage. We argue that firm's cash flow outcomes determine the importance of the adjustment costs on capital structure changes. Then, we estimate capital structure adjustment speeds across three different cash flow realizations. We report that durin...

This paper aims to assess the macroeconomic and financial impact of economic uncertainty using information contained in the second moments of financial risk factors employed in the asset pricing literature. Specifically, we propose the volatility of consumption-based stochastic discount factors (SDFs) as a predictor of future economic and stock mar...

This paper proposes an ICAPM in which the risk premium embedded in variance swaps is the factor mimicking portfolio for hedging exposure to changes in future investment conditions. Recent empirical evidence shows that the fears by investors to deviations from Normality in the distribution of returns are able to explain time-varying financial and ma...

This paper employs mixed data sampling (MIDAS) to estimate a portfolio’s conditional beta with the market and with alternative risk factors. The market risk premium is positive and significant, and the result is robust to alternative asset pricing specifications, and model misspecification. However, the traditional two-pass ordinary least squares (...

We follow the correct Jagannathan and Wang (2002) framework for comparing the estimates and specification tests of the classical Beta and Stochastic Discount Factor/Generalized Method of Moments (SDF/GMM) methods. We extend previous studies by considering not only single but also multifactor models, and by taking into account some of the prescripti...

Recent papers in asset pricing have added a market-wide liquidity factor to traditional portfolio-based or factor models. However, none of these papers has reported any evidence on how aggregate liquidity behaves together with consumption growth risk. This paper covers this gap by providing a comprehensive analysis of the cross-sectional variation...

According toHarvey (1988), the forecasting ability of the term spread on economic growth is due to the fact that interest rates reflect investors' expectations about the future economic situation when deciding their plans for consumption and investment. Past literature has used ex post data on output or consumption growth as proxies for their expec...

This paper analyzes empirically the volatility of consumption-based stochastic discount factors as a measure of implicit economic fears by studying its relationship with future economic and stock market cycles. Time-varying economic fears seem to be well captured by the volatility of stochastic discount factors. In particular, the volatility of rec...

This paper discusses how to introduce liquidity into the well known mean-variance framework of portfolio selection using a representative sample of Spanish equity portfolios. Either by estimating mean-variance liquidity constrained frontiers or directly estimating optimal portfolios for alternative levels of risk aversion and preference for liquidi...

Performance evaluation of professionally managed portfolios is a key topic of financial economics. Hence, most of the papers on mutual funds have examined whether portfolio managers are able to present superior performance in some sense previously defined.

The main objective of this paper is to analyse the value of information contained in prices of options on the IBEX 35 index at the Spanish Stock Exchange Market. The forward looking information is extracted using implied risk-neutral density functions estimated by a mixture of two-lognormals and several alternative risk adjustments. Our results sho...

The paper shows that the cost of illiquidity is not (positively) priced over all months in the Spanish continuous auction system, where liquidity is provided in the absence of market makers. Two distinct approaches are employed. Both the two-step traditional cross-sectional method and the pooled cross-section time series analysis tend to indicate t...

The main objective of this paper is to analyse the value of information contained in prices of options on the IBEX 35 index at the Spanish Stock Exchange Market. The forward looking information is extracted using implied risk-neutral density functions estimated by a mixture of two-lognormals and several alternative risk adjustments. Our results sho...

This paper proposes a GARCH-type model allowing for time-varying volatility, skewness and kurtosis. The model is estimated assuming a Gram–Charlier (GC) series expansion of the normal density function for the error term, which is easier to estimate than the non-central t distribution proposed by [Harvey, C. R. & Siddique, A. (1999). Autorregresive...

We employ MIDAS (mixed data sampling) to study the risk–expected return trade-off in several European stock indices. Using MIDAS, we report that in most indices there is a significant positive relationship between risk and expected return. This strongly contrasts with the result we obtain when we employ both symmetric and asymmetric GARCH models fo...

The main objective of this paper is to test whether the risk-neutral densities (RNDs) implied in the prices of the future options contract on the Spanish IBEX 35 index accurately predict the distribution of future outcomes of the underlying asset. We estimate RNDs using both parametric and nonparametric procedures. We find that between 1996 and 200...

This paper shows the extraordinary capacity of yield spreads to anticipate consumption growth as proxy by the Economic Sentiment Indicator elaborated by the European Commission in order to predict turning points in business cycles. This new evidence complements the well known results regarding the usefulness of the slope of the term structure of in...

This paper presents a comparison of alternative option pricing models based either on jump-diffusion nor stochastic volatility data generating processes. We assume either a smooth volatility function of some previously defined explanatory variables or a model in which discrete-based observations can be employed to estimate both path-dependence vola...

En este trabajo empleamos MIDAS (Muestreo Mixto de Datos) para estudiar la relación entre riesgo y rendimiento esperado en varios índices bursátiles europeos. Cuando se utiliza MIDAS mostramos que, para la mayoría de los índices, existe una relación positiva y significativa entre riesgo y rendimiento esperado. Este resultado contrasta llamativament...

El principal objetivo de este trabajo es contrastar si las densidades neutrales al riesgo (DNR) implícitas en los precios de las opciones sobre el futuro sobre el índice Ibex 35 predicen adecuadamente la distribución de los valores futuros del activo subyacente. Las DNR se estiman utilizando tanto procedimientos paramétricos como no paramétricos. E...

This paper studies the behavior of the implied volatility function (smile) when the true distribution of the underlying asset is consistent with the stochastic volatility model proposed by Heston (1993). The main result of the paper is to extend previous results applicable to the smile as a whole to alternative degrees of moneyness. The conditions...

In an economy with multiple sources of risk, the short-term interest rate does not capture all the information that determines the conditional distribution of bond yields. This is also true for path-dependent term structure models. In either case, the current short rate level is not a sufficient statistic for the conditional density of future short...

This paper provides an introduction to alternative models of uncertain commodity prices. A model of commodity price movements is the engine around which any valuation methodology for commodity production projects is built, whether discounted cash flow (DCF) models or the recently developed modern asset pricing (MAP) methods. The accuracy of the val...

This paper estimates a new measure of liquidity costs in a market driven by orders. It represents the cost of simultaneously buying and selling a given amount of shares, and it is given by a single measure of ex-ante liquidity that aggregates all available information in the limit order book for a given number of shares. The cost of liquidity is an...

This paper proposes a GARCH-type model allowing for time-varying volatility, skewness and kurtosis. The model is estimated assuming a Gram-Charlier series expansion of the normal density function for the error term, which is easier to estimate than the non-central t distribution proposed by Harvey and Siddique (1999). Moreover, this approach accoun...

Abstract. This paper proposes a semiparametric option pricing model with liquidity, as proxied by the relative bid-ask spread. A nonparametric volatility function with liquidity costs as an explanatory variable is estimated using the Symmetrized Nearest Neighbors (SNN) estimator rather than the traditional kernel estimator. The SNN estimator is par...

We study the functioning of secured and unsecured interbank markets in the presence of credit risk. The model generates empirical predictions that are in line with developments during the 2007–09 financial crisis. Interest rates decouple across secured and unsecured markets following an adverse shock to credit risk. The scarcity of underlying colla...

This is an empirical reseach that tests the simple and commonly used CAPM. However, we propose a new way to estimate the beta (market) risk. It is well known that the CAPM is an wquilibrium model that considers a single factor: the market, and the generalized practice is to approach its risk with the covariance between the return on an asset and th...

Systematic liquidity shocks should affect the optimal behavior of agents in financial markets. Indeed, fluctuations in various measures of liquidity are significantly correlated across common stocks. Accordingly, this paper empirically analyzes whether Spanish average returns vary cross sectionally with betas estimated relative to three competing l...

This paper examines the stochastic volatility model suggested by Heston [Rev. Financ. Stud. 6 (1993) 327] in a thinly traded market context. We employ a time-series approach based on indirect inference to estimate the model parameters. We also discuss the potential effects of time-varying skewness and kurtosis on the performance of the model. It is...

Given the evidence provided by Longstaff (1995), and Peña, Rubio and Serna (1999) a serious candidate to explain the pronounced pattern of volatility estimates across exercise prices might be related to liquidity costs. Using all calls and puts transacted between 16:00 and 16:45 on the Spanish IBEX‐35 index futures from January 1994 to October 1998...

This paper examines the stochastic volatility model suggested by Heston (1993). We employ a time-series approach to estimate the model and we discuss the potential effects of time-varying skewness and kurtosis on the performance of the model. In particular, it is found that the model tends to overprice out-of-the-money calls and underprice in-the-m...

Given the evidence provided by Longstaff (1995), and Pena, Rubio and Serna (1999) a serious candidate to explain the pronounced pattern of volatility estimates across exercise prices might be related to liquidity costs. Using all calls and puts transacted between 16:00 and 16:45 on the Spanish IBEX-35 index futures from January 1994 to October 1998...

This paper proposes a semiparametric option pricing model with liquidity, as proxied by the relative bid-ask spread. The nonparametric volatility function with liquidity as an explanatory variable is estimated using the Symmetrized Nearest Neighbors (SNN) estimator rather than the traditional kernel estimator. Moreover, special care is taken in obt...

This paper examines the stochastic volatility model suggested by Heston (1993). We employ a time-series approach to estimate the model and we discuss the potential effects of time-varying skewness and kurtosis on the performance of the model. In particular, it is found that the model tends to overprice out-of-the-money calls and underprice in-the-m...

We report simple regressions and Granger causality tests in order to understand the pattern of implied volatilities across exercise prices. We employ all calls and puts transacted between 16:00 and 16:45 on the Spanish IBEX-35 index from January 1994 to April 1996. Transaction costs, proxied by the bid–ask spread, seem to be a key determinant of th...

This work analyses the empirical consequences for the evaluation of managed portfolios of employing nonsimultaneous prices for the calculation of net asset values and benchmarks. The underestimation of risk found under nonsimultaneity has serious consequences for performance evaluation of mutual funds. Moreover, the conditional framework of perform...

Este trabajo analiza el modelo de valoración de opciones con volatilidad estocástica propuesto por Heston (1993). Estimamos los parámetros del proceso de varianza estocástica que propone el modelo mediante la técnica de inferencia indirecta y la volatilidad diaria mediante una aproximación al proceso de varianza estocástica de Heston basada en un N...

We show that liquidity providers do not significantly respond to changes in information asymmetry risks, at least when we analyse their trading behaviour around dividend announcements of a representative sample of stocks in a continuous auction trading mechanism. the implicit bid-ask spread does not seem to change beyond what is normally conveyed t...

This paper analyzes the performance of mutual funds in Spain between January 1980 and June 1990. The robustness of results to alternative measurements and benchmarks are analyzed. The results indicate that, with monthly returns alone, it is not possible to distinguish between selectivity and timing. We are only able to measure the magnitude of tota...

Este trabajo analiza la estacíonalidad del mercado bursátil en enero a través de las estrategias de compras y ventas de las instituciones de Inversión colectiva. En particular, se investigan las estrategias que pueden calificarse como maquilladoras al consistir en vender acciones perdedoras y comprar acciones ganadoras al final de cada trimestre y...

The primary aim of the paper is to place current methodological discussions in macroeconometric modeling contrasting the ‘theory first’ versus the ‘data first’ perspectives in the context of a broader methodological framework with a view to constructively appraise them. In particular, the paper focuses on Colander’s argument in his paper “Economist...

The primary aim of the paper is to place current methodological discussions in macroeconometric modeling contrasting the ‘theory first’ versus the ‘data first’ perspectives in the context of a broader methodological framework with a view to constructively appraise them. In particular, the paper focuses on Colander’s argument in his paper “Economist...

We examine the behavior of common stock prices after a large change in price occurs during a single trading day and find evidence that the stock market appears to have overreacted, especially in the case of price declines; however, the magnitude of the overreaction is small compared to the bid-ask spreads observed for the individual stocks in the s...

A multivariate framework is used in order to study the price formation of risky assets in the Spanish capital market. Issues regarding the efficiency of the Spanish value-weighted stock market index, the validity of equilibrium considerations, the size effect, and the nature of the return generating process during January are analyzed.

This version: August 15, 2011 Using the Efficient Method of Moments we estimate a continuous time diffusion for the stochastic volatility of some international stock market indices that allows for possible jumps in returns. These jumps are needed for a sensible characterization of the dynamics of the distribution of returns, even under stochastic v...