The Journal of Finance

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: 3.

The Price of Correlation Risk: Evidence from Equity Options

Published: 5/20/2009,  Volume: 64,  Issue: 3  |  DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2009.01467.x  |  Cited by: 349

JOOST DRIESSEN, PASCAL J. MAENHOUT, GRIGORY VILKOV

We study whether exposure to marketwide correlation shocks affects expected option returns, using data on S&P100 index options, options on all components, and stock returns. We find evidence of priced correlation risk based on prices of index and individual variance risk. A trading strategy exploiting priced correlation risk generates a high alpha and is attractive for CRRA investors without frictions. Correlation risk exposure explains the cross‐section of index and individual option returns well. The correlation risk premium cannot be exploited with realistic trading frictions, providing a limits‐to‐arbitrage interpretation of our finding of a high price of correlation risk.


Model Ambiguity versus Model Misspecification in Dynamic Portfolio Choice

Published: 1/21/2026,  Volume: 81,  Issue: 3  |  DOI: 10.1111/jofi.70027  |  Cited by: 0

PASCAL J. MAENHOUT, HAO XING, ANNE G. BALTER

We study aversion to model ambiguity and misspecification in dynamic portfolio choice. Risk‐averse investors (relative risk aversion ) fear return persistence, while risk‐tolerant investors () fear mean reversion, when confronting model misspecification concerns of identically and independently distributed (IID) returns. The intuition is that risk‐averse investors, who want to hedge intertemporally, endogenously fear return persistence, which precludes hedging. A log investor is myopic and unaffected by model misspecification, therefore only worrying about model ambiguity. Our model can generate belief scarring, nonparticipation in equity markets, and extrapolative return expectations. Extending beyond IID returns, we study model misspecification for a mean‐reverting Sharpe ratio.


The Credit Line Channel

Published: 8/27/2025,  Volume: 80,  Issue: 6  |  DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13486  |  Cited by: 24

DANIEL L. GREENWALD, JOHN KRAINER, PASCAL PAUL

Aggregate U.S. bank lending to firms expanded following the outbreak of COVID‐19. Using loan‐level supervisory data, we show that this expansion was driven by draws on credit lines by large firms. Banks that experienced larger credit line drawdowns restricted term lending more, crowding out credit to smaller firms, which reacted by reducing investment. A structural model calibrated to match our empirical results shows that while credit lines increase total bank credit in bad times, they redistribute credit from firms with high propensities to invest to firms with low propensities to invest, exacerbating the decrease in aggregate investment.