IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finana/v63y2019icp174-185.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Skewness risk premium: Theory and empirical evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Lin, Yuehao
  • Lehnert, Thorsten
  • Wolff, Christian

Abstract

Using an equilibrium asset and option pricing model in a simple economy under jump diffusion, we show theoretically that the aggregated excess market returns can be predicted by the skewness risk premium, which is constructed to be the difference between the physical and the risk-neutral skewness. In an empirical application of the model using >20 years of data on S&P500 index options, we find that, in line with theory, risk-averse investors demand risk-compensation for holding stocks when the market skewness risk premium is high. However, when we characterize periods of high and low risk aversion, we show that in line with theory, the relationship only holds when risk aversion is high. In periods of low risk aversion, investors demand lower risk compensation, thus substantially weakening the skewness-risk-premium-return trade off.

Suggested Citation

  • Lin, Yuehao & Lehnert, Thorsten & Wolff, Christian, 2019. "Skewness risk premium: Theory and empirical evidence," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 174-185.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finana:v:63:y:2019:i:c:p:174-185
    DOI: 10.1016/j.irfa.2019.04.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521918306987
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.irfa.2019.04.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chang, Bo Young & Christoffersen, Peter & Jacobs, Kris, 2013. "Market skewness risk and the cross section of stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 46-68.
    2. Hwang, Soosung & Satchell, Stephen E, 1999. "Modelling Emerging Market Risk Premia Using Higher Moments," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 4(4), pages 271-296, October.
    3. Malcolm Baker & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2006. "Investor Sentiment and the Cross‐Section of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1645-1680, August.
    4. Chabi-Yo, Fousseni, 2009. "Pricing Kernels with Coskewness and Volatility Risk," Working Paper Series 2008-25, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    5. Tim Bollerslev & George Tauchen & Hao Zhou, 2009. "Expected Stock Returns and Variance Risk Premia," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(11), pages 4463-4492, November.
    6. Ole E. Barndorff‐Nielsen & Neil Shephard, 2002. "Econometric analysis of realized volatility and its use in estimating stochastic volatility models," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 64(2), pages 253-280, May.
    7. Jun Liu & Francis A. Longstaff & Jun Pan, 2003. "Dynamic Asset Allocation with Event Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(1), pages 231-259, February.
    8. Fousseni Chabi-Yo, 2008. "Conditioning Information and Variance Bounds on Pricing Kernels with Higher- Order Moments: Theory and Evidence," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(1), pages 181-231, January.
    9. Fred D. Arditti, 1967. "Risk And The Required Return On Equity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 22(1), pages 19-36, March.
    10. Bekkour, Lamia & Jin, Xisong & Lehnert, Thorsten & Rasmouki, Fanou & Wolff, Christian, 2015. "Euro at risk: The impact of member countries' credit risk on the stability of the common currency," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 67-83.
    11. Bakshi, Gurdip & Cao, Charles & Chen, Zhiwu, 1997. "Empirical Performance of Alternative Option Pricing Models," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(5), pages 2003-2049, December.
    12. Lim, Kian-Guan, 1989. "A New Test of the Three-Moment Capital Asset Pricing Model," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(2), pages 205-216, June.
    13. Diego Amaya & Peter Christoffersen & Kris Jacobs & Aurelio Vasquez, 2011. "Do Realized Skewness and Kurtosis Predict the Cross-Section of Equity Returns?," CREATES Research Papers 2011-44, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    14. Christopher Adcock & Martin Eling & Nicola Loperfido, 2015. "Skewed distributions in finance and actuarial science: a review," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(13-14), pages 1253-1281, November.
    15. Gurdip Bakshi & Nikunj Kapadia & Dilip Madan, 2003. "Stock Return Characteristics, Skew Laws, and the Differential Pricing of Individual Equity Options," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(1), pages 101-143.
    16. Gurdip Bakshi & Dilip Madan, 2006. "A Theory of Volatility Spreads," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(12), pages 1945-1956, December.
    17. Gurdip Bakshi & Nikunj Kapadia, 2003. "Delta-Hedged Gains and the Negative Market Volatility Risk Premium," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(2), pages 527-566.
    18. Malcolm Baker & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2007. "Investor Sentiment in the Stock Market," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 129-152, Spring.
    19. Peter Carr & Liuren Wu, 2009. "Variance Risk Premiums," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(3), pages 1311-1341, March.
    20. Sears, R Stephen & Wei, K C John, 1985. "Asset Pricing, Higher Moments, and the Market Risk Premium: A Note," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1251-1253, September.
    21. Harvey, Campbell R. & Siddique, Akhtar, 1999. "Autoregressive Conditional Skewness," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(4), pages 465-487, December.
    22. Yu, Jianfeng & Yuan, Yu, 2011. "Investor sentiment and the mean-variance relation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 367-381, May.
    23. Campbell R. Harvey & Akhtar Siddique, 2000. "Conditional Skewness in Asset Pricing Tests," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1263-1295, June.
    24. Kraus, Alan & Litzenberger, Robert H, 1976. "Skewness Preference and the Valuation of Risk Assets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(4), pages 1085-1100, September.
    25. Roman Kozhan & Anthony Neuberger & Paul Schneider, 2013. "The Skew Risk Premium in the Equity Index Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(9), pages 2174-2203.
    26. Friend, Irwin & Westerfield, Randolph, 1980. "Co-Skewness and Capital Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 35(4), pages 897-913, September.
    27. Sears, R Stephen & Wei, K C John, 1988. "The Structure of Skewness Preferences in Asset Pricing Models with Higher Moments: An Empirical Test," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 23(1), pages 25-38, February.
    28. Robert F. Dittmar, 2002. "Nonlinear Pricing Kernels, Kurtosis Preference, and Evidence from the Cross Section of Equity Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 369-403, February.
    29. Thorsten Lehnert & Lamia Bekkour & Xisong Jin & Fanou Rasmouki & Christian Wolff, 2012. "Euro at Risk: The Impact of Member Countries Credit Risk on the Stability of the Common Currency," DEM Discussion Paper Series 12-4, Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg.
    30. Joshua D. Coval & Tyler Shumway, 2001. "Expected Option Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 983-1009, June.
    31. Fousseni Chabi-Yo, 2012. "Pricing Kernels with Stochastic Skewness and Volatility Risk," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(3), pages 624-640, March.
    32. Bates, David S., 2000. "Post-'87 crash fears in the S&P 500 futures option market," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 181-238.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ni, Zhongxin & Wang, Linyu, 2023. "The predictability of skewness risk premium on stock returns: Evidence from Chinese market," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 576-594.
    2. Elyas Elyasiani & Luca Gambarelli & Silvia Muzzioli, 2018. "The use of option prices in order to evaluate the skewness risk premium," Department of Economics 0132, University of Modena and Reggio E., Faculty of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    3. Khashanah, Khaldoun & Simaan, Majeed & Simaan, Yusif, 2022. "Do we need higher-order comoments to enhance mean-variance portfolios? Evidence from a simplified jump process," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    4. Bressan, Silvia & Weissensteiner, Alex, 2021. "The financial conglomerate discount: Insights from stock return skewness," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    5. Sarwar, Ghulam, 2023. "Market risks that change US-European equity correlations," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    6. Sensoy, Ahmet & Serdengeçti, Süleyman, 2020. "Impact of portfolio flows and heterogeneous expectations on FX jumps: Evidence from an emerging market," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    7. Marinela Adriana Finta & José Renato Haas Ornelas, 2018. "Commodity Return Predictability: evidence from implied variance, skewness and their risk premia and their risk premia," Working Papers Series 479, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
    8. Finta, Marinela Adriana & Ornelas, José Renato Haas, 2022. "Commodity return predictability: Evidence from implied variance, skewness, and their risk premia☆☆," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    9. Le, Trung H., 2021. "International portfolio allocation: The role of conditional higher moments," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 33-57.
    10. Thorsten Lehnert & Yuehao Lin & Nicolas Martelin, 2013. "Stein s Overreaction Puzzle: Option Anomaly or Perfectly Rational Behavior?," LSF Research Working Paper Series 13-11, Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg.
    11. Díaz, Antonio & Escribano, Ana & Esparcia, Carlos, 2024. "Sustainable risk preferences on asset allocation: a higher order optimal portfolio study," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chang, Bo Young & Christoffersen, Peter & Jacobs, Kris, 2013. "Market skewness risk and the cross section of stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 46-68.
    2. Maheu, John M. & McCurdy, Thomas H. & Zhao, Xiaofei, 2013. "Do jumps contribute to the dynamics of the equity premium?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 457-477.
    3. Christoffersen, Peter & Fournier, Mathieu & Jacobs, Kris & Karoui, Mehdi, 2021. "Option-Based Estimation of the Price of Coskewness and Cokurtosis Risk," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 56(1), pages 65-91, February.
    4. Abed Masrorkhah, Sara & Lehnert, Thorsten, 2017. "Press freedom and jumps in stock prices," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 151-162.
    5. Sévi, Benoît, 2013. "An empirical analysis of the downside risk-return trade-off at daily frequency," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 189-197.
    6. Bruno Feunou & Jean-Sébastien Fontaine & Roméo Tédongap, 2017. "Implied volatility and skewness surface," Review of Derivatives Research, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 167-202, July.
    7. I-Hsuan Ethan Chiang, 2016. "Skewness And Coskewness In Bond Returns," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 39(2), pages 145-178, June.
    8. Chiao, Chaoshin & Hung, Ken & Srivastava, Suresh C., 2003. "Taiwan stock market and four-moment asset pricing model," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 355-381, October.
    9. Eric Jondeau & Michael Rockinger, 2006. "Optimal Portfolio Allocation under Higher Moments," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 12(1), pages 29-55, January.
    10. Elyasiani, Elyas & Gambarelli, Luca & Muzzioli, Silvia, 2020. "Moment risk premia and the cross-section of stock returns in the European stock market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    11. Geon Ho Choe & Kyungsub Lee, 2013. "High moment variations and their application," Papers 1311.4973, arXiv.org.
    12. Bali, Turan G. & Cakici, Nusret & Whitelaw, Robert F., 2011. "Maxing out: Stocks as lotteries and the cross-section of expected returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 427-446, February.
    13. Vendrame, Vasco & Tucker, Jon & Guermat, Cherif, 2016. "Some extensions of the CAPM for individual assets," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 78-85.
    14. Attiya Y. Javid & Eatzaz Ahmad, 2008. "Test of Multi-moment Capital Asset Pricing Model: Evidence from Karachi Stock Exchange," PIDE-Working Papers 2008:49, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    15. Byun, Suk-Joon & Kim, Da-Hea, 2016. "Gambling preference and individual equity option returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 155-174.
    16. Ayadi, Mohamed A. & Cao, Xu & Lazrak, Skander & Wang, Yan, 2019. "Do idiosyncratic skewness and kurtosis really matter?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    17. Erik Vogt, 2014. "Option-implied term structures," Staff Reports 706, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    18. Eric Jondeau & Michael Rockinger, 2005. "Conditional Asset Allocation under Non-Normality: How Costly is the Mean-Variance Criterion?," FAME Research Paper Series rp132, International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering.
    19. Pratish Patel & Andrew Raquel & Savannah Chadwick, 2024. "The cash-secured put-write strategy and the variance risk premium," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 25(1), pages 31-50, February.
    20. Konstantinidi, Eirini & Skiadopoulos, George, 2016. "How does the market variance risk premium vary over time? Evidence from S&P 500 variance swap investment returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 62-75.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Asset pricing; Skewness risk premium; Option markets; Central moments; Investor sentiment; Risk aversion;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • C15 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Statistical Simulation Methods: General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finana:v:63:y:2019:i:c:p:174-185. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620166 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.