Juan M. Londono

• Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented disruptions to global supply chains, labor markets, and economic activity, leading to significant volatility in inflation rates worldwide. Not only the level of inflation but the uncertainty about the future path of inflation increased considerably since the onset of the pandemic and have remained elevate...

On May 20 and 21, 2024, the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York jointly hosted the Third Annual International Roles of the U.S. Dollar Conference. The conference brought together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to understand how changes in the global economic and financial landscape may affect the central rol...

Using a sample of 39 countries representing 88% of global GDP, we find that real economic uncertainty (REU) has negative long‐lasting domestic economic effects and transmits across countries. The international spillover effects of REU are both statistically significant and economically meaningful, and trade ties play a key role in explaining its tr...

The Swiss National Bank (SNB), the Division of International Finance of the Federal Reserve Board (FRB), and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) jointly organized the third High-Level Conference on Global Risk, Uncertainty, and Volatility on November 14 and 15 of 2023. The conference brought academics and policymakers together to discuss t...

We examine the commonalities in international equity risk premiums by linking empirical evidence for the ability of U.S. downside and upside variance risk premiums (DVP and UVP, respectively) to predict international stock returns with implications from an empirical model featuring asymmetric economic uncertainty and risk aversion. We find that DVP...

Policymakers, including Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) participants, have been stressing the elevated level of uncertainty, especially related to inflation, and the challenge this poses for monetary policy. As seen in Figure 1, with few exceptions, FOMC participants see the level of uncertainty around their forecasts for core PCE inflation as...

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of existing measures of uncertainty, risk, and volatility, noting their conceptual distinctions. It summarizes how they are constructed, their relative advantages in usage, and their effects on financial market and economic outcomes. The measures are divided into four categories based on the construction m...

The U.S. dollar plays a central role in the global economy. In addition to being the most widely used currency in foreign exchange transactions, it represents the largest share in official reserves, international debt securities and loans, cross-border payments, and trade invoicing.

Using recently available daily SandP 500 index option expirations, we examine the ex ante pricing of uncertainty surrounding key economic releases and the determinants of risk premia associated with these releases. The cost of insurance against price, variance, and downside risk is higher for options that span U.S. CPI, FOMC, Nonfarm Payroll, and G...

Uncertainty about inflation has risen considerably across the globe since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lack of clarity about how far inflation might fall during the depths of the pandemic gave way to concerns about inflationary pressures as demand surged and supply was constrained throughout 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented disruptions in supply, demand, and productivity, which have had cataclysmic health, social, and economic implications across the globe. In this note, we explore the large increase in global real economic uncertainty observed during the pandemic as a channel that explains or magnifies the economic implicati...

We investigate how central banks' governance frameworks influence their financial stability communication strategies and assess the effectiveness of these strategies in preventing a worsening of financial cycle conditions. We develop a simple conceptual framework of how central banks communicate about financial stability and how communication shape...

We examine the commonality in international equity risk premiums by linking empirical evidence for the international stock return predictability of US downside and upside variance risk premiums (DVP and UVP, respectively) with implications from an international asset pricing framework, which takes the perspective of a US/global investor and feature...

We find that an option-based equity tail risk factor is priced in the cross section of currency returns; more exposed currencies offer a low risk premium because they hedge against equity tail risk. A portfolio that buys currencies with high equity tail beta and shorts those with low beta extracts the global component in the tail factor. The estima...

Using a sample of 30 countries representing about 65% of the global GDP, we find that real economic uncertainty (REU) has negative long-lasting domestic economic effects and transmits across countries. The international spillover effects of REU are (i) additional to those of domestic REUs, (ii) statistically significant, and (iii) economically mean...

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the implementation of unprecedented policy actions by central banks around the world. Along with the reduction of interest rates and the use of asset purchase and lending programs, central bank communications have been actively deployed as a policy tool.

Researchers, policymakers, and market participants have become increasingly focused on the effects of uncertainty and risk on financial market and economic outcomes. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the many existing measures of risk, uncertainty, and volatility. It summarizes what these measures capture, how they are constructed, and...

We use the text of financial stability reports (FSRs) published by central banks to analyze the relation between the sentiment they convey and the financial cycle. We construct a dictionary tailored specifically to a financial stability context, which classifies words as positive or negative based on the sentiment they convey in FSRs. With this dic...

In this note, we construct a measure of real economic uncertainty (REU)--based on the predictability of near-term economic performance--for the major advanced economies.

This paper proposes a new measure of contagion as the coincidence of large left-tail events in the idiosyncratic disturbances of international stock returns after controlling for their exposure to a global factor. Episodes of bad contagion, especially those involving a large number of countries, are followed by a significant drop in international s...

We develop a tractable equilibrium asset pricing model with cumulative prospect theory (CPT) preferences. Using GMM on a sample of U.S. equity index option returns, we show that by introducing a single common probability weighting parameter for both tails of the return distribution, the CPT model can simultaneously generate the otherwise puzzlingly...

We find that a US equity tail risk factor constructed from out-of-the-money S&P 500 put option prices explains the cross-sectional variation of currency excess returns. Currencies highly exposed to this factor offer a low currency risk premium because they appreciate when US tail risk increases. In a reduced-form model, we show that country-specifi...

In this paper, we document and explain the distinct behaviors of U.S. downside and upside variance risk premiums (DVP and UVP, respectively) and their international stock return predictability patterns. DVP, the compensation for bearing downside variance risk, is positive, highly correlated with the total variance premium, and countercyclical, wher...

In this note, we identify a global component of equity option-implied volatilities and address two questions: What are its fundamental drivers? And, given these drivers, are recent levels of volatility unexpectedly low?

A large number of measures for monitoring risk and uncertainty surrounding macroeconomic and financial outcomes have been proposed in the literature, and these measures are frequently used by market participants, policy makers, and researchers in their analyses. However, risk and uncertainty measures differ across multiple dimensions, including the...

In this note, we explain in detail how we made word-level choices in our dictionary. In the note, we also consolidate our lessons from this process into a framework for thinking about dictionary construction.

This paper explores the direct effects and spillovers of unconventional monetary and exchange rate policies. We find that official purchases of foreign assets have a large positive effect on a country’s current account that diminishes considerably as capital mobility rises. There is an important additional effect through the lagged stock of officia...

Using the text of financial stability reports (FSRs) published by central banks, we analyze the relation between the financial cycle and the sentiment conveyed in these official communications. To do so, we construct a dictionary tailored specifically to a financial stability context, which assigns positive and negative connotations based on the se...

We provide new empirical evidence that world currency and U.S. stock variance risk premiums have nonredundant and significant predictive power for the appreciation rates of 22 with respect to the U.S. dollar, especially at the four-month and one-month horizons, respectively. The heterogeneous exposures of currencies to the currency variance risk pr...

This paper explores the direct effects and spillovers of unconventional monetary and exchange rate policies. We find that official purchases of foreign assets have a large positive effect on a country's current account that diminishes considerably as capital mobility rises. There is an important additional effect through the lagged stock of officia...

Bad contagion, the downside component of contagion in international stock markets, has negative implications for financial stability. I propose a measure for the occurrence and severity of global contagion that combines the factor-model approach in Bekaert et al. (2005) with the model-free or co-exceedance approach in Bae et al. (2003). Contagion i...

We investigate the informational content of options-implied probability density functions (PDFs) for the future price of oil. Using a semiparametric variant of the methodology in Breeden and Litzenberger (1978), we investigate the fit and smoothness of distributions derived from alternative PDF estimation methods, and develop a set of robust summar...

The price–dividend (PD) ratio must be stationary for the present value model to be valid. However, several market episodes show stock prices drifting apart from dividends. This paper investigates PD ratio stationarity by considering a Markov-switching model featuring an asymmetric adjustment speed toward a unique attractor. A three-regime model dis...

We investigate the informational content of options-implied probability density functions (PDFs) for the future price of oil. Using a semiparametric variant of the methodology in Breeden and Litzenberger (1978), we investigate the fit and smoothness of distributions derived from alternative PDF estimation methods, and develop a set of robust summar...

Using a novel dataset on central bank interventions to financial institutions, we examine the impact of capital injection announcements on systemic risk for the banking sector in the U.S. and the euro area between 2008 and 2013. We propose a new measure of options-based systemic risk called downside correlation risk premium (DCRP), which quantifies...

Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT) can explain the variance premium (VP) puzzle. We solve a simple equilibrium model with CPT investors and find that probability weighting plays a key role in generating the VP, while loss aversion captures the equity premium. Using GMM on a sample of US equity and index option returns between 1996 and 2010, we estima...

We investigate the effects of U.S. unconventional monetary policies on sovereign yields, foreign exchange rates, and stock prices in emerging market economies (EMEs), and we analyze how these effects depend on country-specifc characteristics. We find that, although EME asset prices, mainly those of sovereign bonds, responded strongly to unconventio...

Using a novel dataset on government interventions into financial institutions between 2008-2013, we examine the impact of capital injection announcements on the downside correlation risk premium (DCRP), the compensation that investors demand to bear the risk of large correlated drops in banks' stock prices. We find that intervention announcements s...

We investigate the effects of U.S. unconventional monetary policies on sovereign yields, foreign exchange rates, and stock prices in emerging market economies (EMEs), and we analyze how these effects depend on country-specifc characteristics. We find that, although EME asset prices, mainly those of sovereign bonds, responded strongly to unconventio...

We provide new empirical evidence that the world currency variance risk premium, constructed as an average of the variance risk premiums of available currencies with respect to the U.S. dollar, significantly predicts the appreciation rates of 22 currencies. The predictability is maximized at the 4-months horizon, and the gains in R2s are substantia...

This paper presents evidence that the foreign exchange appreciation is predictable by the currency variance risk premium at a medium 6-month horizon and by the stock variance risk premium at a short 1-month horizon. Although currency variance risk premiums are highly correlated with each other over longer horizons, their correlations with stock var...

This paper proposes an extended version of the basic New Keynesian monetary (NKM) model which contemplates revision processes of output and inflation data in order to assess the importance of data revisions on the estimated monetary policy rule parameters and the transmission of policy shocks. Our empirical evidence based on a structural econometri...

This paper investigates the variance risk premium in an international setting. First, I provide new evidence on the basic stylized facts traditionally documented for the US. I show that while the variance premiums in several other countries are, on average, positive and display significant time variation, they do not predict local equity returns. T...

This paper investigates the variance risk premium in an international setting. First, I provide new evidence on the basic stylized facts traditionally documented for the US. I show that while the variance premiums in several other countries are, on average, positive and display significant time variation, they do not predict local equity returns. T...

This paper proposes an extended version of the basic New Keynesian monetary (NKM) model which contemplates revision processes of output and inflation data in order to assess the importance of data re-visions on the estimated monetary policy rule parameters and the trans-mission of policy shocks. Our empirical evidence based on a structural economet...

This paper investigates the variance risk premium in an international setting. First, I provide new evidence on the basic stylized facts traditionally documented for the US. I show that while the variance premiums in several other countries are, on average, positive and display significant time variation, they do not predict local equity returns. T...

The term spread may play a major role in a monetary policy rule whenever data revisions of output and inflation are not well behaved. In this paper we use a structural approach based on the indirect inference principle to estimate a standard version of the New Keynesian Monetary (NKM) model augmented with term structure using both revised and real-...

A necessary condition for the validity of the present value model is that the price-dividend ratio must be stationary. However, significant market episodes in the late 20th century seem to provide evidence of nonstationarity. This paper analyzes the stationarity of this ratio in the context of a Markov-switching model à la Hamilton (1989) where an...

This paper proposes an extended version of the New Key- nesian Monetary (NKM) model which contemplates revision processes of output and inflation data in order to assess the importance of data revisions on the estimated monetary policy rule parameters. The estima- tion results of the extended NKM model suggest that real-time data are not rational f...