G12 - Asset Pricing; Trading volume; Bond Interest Rates

• Variance Premium, Downside Risk and Expected Stock Returns

  Staff Working Paper 2017-58 Bruno Feunou, Ricardo Lopez Aliouchkin, Roméo Tedongap, Lai Xi

  We decompose total variance into its bad and good components and measure the premia associated with their fluctuations using stock and option data from a large cross-section of firms.

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

• Risk-Neutral Moment-Based Estimation of Affine Option Pricing Models

  Staff Working Paper 2017-55 Bruno Feunou, Cédric Okou

  This paper provides a novel methodology for estimating option pricing models based on risk-neutral moments. We synthesize the distribution extracted from a panel of option prices and exploit linear relationships between risk-neutral cumulants and latent factors within the continuous time affine stochastic volatility framework.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12

• Do Liquidity Proxies Measure Liquidity in Canadian Bond Markets?

  Staff Analytical Note 2017-23 Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, Jeffrey Gao, Jabir Sandhu, Kobe Wu

  This analytical note evaluates the reliability of proxies for measuring liquidity in Canadian bond markets. We find that price-impact and bid-ask proxies paint a similar picture of evolving liquidity conditions to that obtained from richer measures of liquidity for benchmark Government of Canada bonds.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Debt management, Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G14, G2, G23, G3, G32

• Good Volatility, Bad Volatility and Option Pricing

  Staff Working Paper 2017-52 Bruno Feunou, Cédric Okou

  Advances in variance analysis permit the splitting of the total quadratic variation of a jump diffusion process into upside and downside components. Recent studies establish that this decomposition enhances volatility predictions, and highlight the upside/downside variance spread as a driver of the asymmetry in stock price distributions.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12

• The Impacts of Monetary Policy Statements

  Staff Analytical Note 2017-22 Bruno Feunou, Corey Garriott, James Kyeong, Raisa Leiderman

  In this note, we find that market participants react to an unexpected change in the tone of Canadian monetary policy statements. When the market perceives that the Bank of Canada plans to tighten (or alternatively, loosen) the monetary policy earlier than previously expected, the Canadian dollar appreciates (or depreciates) and long-term Government of Canada bond yields increase (or decrease). The tone of a statement is particularly relevant to the market when the policy rate has been unchanged for some time.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Asset pricing, Exchange rates, Interest rates, Monetary policy communications, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E4, E43, E5, E52, F, F3, F31, G, G1, G12

• On the Tail Risk Premium in the Oil Market

  Staff Working Paper 2017-46 Reinhard Ellwanger

  This paper shows that changes in market participants’ fear of rare events implied by crude oil options contribute to oil price volatility and oil return predictability. Using 25 years of historical data, we document economically large tail risk premia that vary substantially over time and significantly forecast crude oil futures and spot returns.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, C58, D, D8, D84, E, E4, E44, G, G1, G12, G13, Q, Q4, Q43

• Measuring Limits of Arbitrage in Fixed-Income Markets

  Staff Working Paper 2017-44 Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, Guillaume Nolin

  We use relative value to measure limits to arbitrage in fixed-income markets. Relative value captures apparent deviations from no-arbitrage relationships. It is simple, intuitive and can be computed model-free for any bond.

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

• A Counterfactual Valuation of the Stock Index as a Predictor of Crashes

  Staff Working Paper 2017-38 Tom Roberts

  Stock market fundamentals would not seem to meaningfully predict returns over a shorter-term horizon—instead, I shift focus to severe downside risk (i.e., crashes).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Financial stability JEL Code(s): G, G0, G01, G1, G12, G17, G19

• Optimal Estimation of Multi-Country Gaussian Dynamic Term Structure Models Using Linear Regressions

  Staff Working Paper 2017-33 Antonio Diez de los Rios

  This paper proposes a novel asymptotic least-squares estimator of multi-country Gaussian dynamic term structure models that is easy to compute and asymptotically efficient, even when the number of countries is relatively large—a situation in which other recently proposed approaches lose their tractability.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Econometric and statistical methods, Exchange rates, Interest rates JEL Code(s): E, E4, E43, F, F3, F31, G, G1, G12, G15

• Has Liquidity in Canadian Government Bond Markets Deteriorated?

  Staff Analytical Note 2017-10 Sermin Gungor, Jun Yang

  This note presents measures of liquidity used by the Bank of Canada to monitor market conditions and discusses recent trends in Government of Canada (GoC) fixed-income market liquidity. Our results indicate that the Bank’s measures have improved since the financial crisis. Furthermore, GoC market liquidity deteriorated following several stressful events: the euro crisis in 2011, the taper tantrum in 2013 and the oil price shock in 2015. In all three cases, the deterioration remained within historical norms and liquidity returned to normal levels afterwards.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G14