The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.
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Search results: 4.
Sources of Entropy in Representative Agent Models
Published: 08/12/2013 | DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12090
DAVID BACKUS, MIKHAIL CHERNOV, STANLEY ZIN
We propose two data‐based performance measures for asset pricing models and apply them to models with recursive utility and habits. Excess returns on risky securities are reflected in the pricing kernel's dispersion and riskless bond yields are reflected in its dynamics. We measure dispersion with entropy and dynamics with horizon dependence, the difference between entropy over several periods and one. We compare their magnitudes to estimates derived from asset returns. This exercise reveals tension between a model's ability to generate one‐period entropy, which should be large, and horizon dependence, which should be small.
Disasters Implied by Equity Index Options
Published: 11/14/2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2011.01697.x
DAVID BACKUS, MIKHAIL CHERNOV, IAN MARTIN
We use equity index options to quantify the distribution of consumption growth disasters. The challenge lies in connecting the risk‐neutral distribution of equity returns implied by options to the true distribution of consumption growth. First, we compare pricing kernels constructed from macro‐finance and option‐pricing models. Second, we compare option prices derived from a macro‐finance model to those we observe. Third, we compare the distribution of consumption growth derived from option prices using a macro‐finance model to estimates based on macroeconomic data. All three perspectives suggest that options imply smaller probabilities of extreme outcomes than have been estimated from macroeconomic data.
Affine Term Structure Models and the Forward Premium Anomaly
Published: 12/17/2002 | DOI: 10.1111/0022-1082.00325
David K. Backus, Silverio Foresi, Chris I. Telmer
One of the most puzzling features of currency prices is the forward premium anomaly: the tendency for high interest rate currencies to appreciate. We characterize the anomaly in the context of affine models of the term structure of interest rates. In affine models, the anomaly requires either that state variables have asymmetric effects on state prices in different currencies or that nominal interest rates take on negative values with positive probability. We find the quantitative properties of either alternative to have important shortcomings.
Accounting for Forward Rates in Markets for Foreign Currency
Published: 12/01/1993 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1993.tb05132.x
DAVID K. BACKUS, ALLAN W. GREGORY, CHRIS I. TELMER
Forward and spot exchange rates between major currencies imply large standard deviations of both predictable returns from currency speculation and of the equilibrium price measure (the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution). Representative agent theory with time‐additive preferences cannot account for either of these properties. We show that the theory does considerably better along these dimensions when the representative agent's preferences exhibit habit persistence, but that the theory fails to reproduce some of the other properties of the data—in particular, the strong autocorrelation of forward premiums.