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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Electricity Forward Prices: A High‐Frequency Empirical Analysis

Published: 11/27/2005   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2004.00682.x

Francis A. Longstaff, Ashley W. Wang

We conduct an empirical analysis of forward prices in the PJM electricity market using a high‐frequency data set of hourly spot and day‐ahead forward prices. We find that there are significant risk premia in electricity forward prices. These premia vary systematically throughout the day and are directly related to economic risk factors, such as the volatility of unexpected changes in demand, spot prices, and total revenues. These results support the hypothesis that electricity forward prices in the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland market are determined rationally by risk‐averse economic agents.


Estimation and Test of a Simple Model of Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing

Published: 11/27/2005   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2004.00678.x

Michael J. Brennan, Ashley W. Wang, Yihong Xia

A simple valuation model with time‐varying investment opportunities is developed and estimated. The model assumes that the investment opportunity set is completely described by the real interest rate and the maximum Sharpe ratio, which follow correlated Ornstein–Uhlenbeck processes. The model parameters and time series of the state variables are estimated using U.S. Treasury bond yields and expected inflation from January 1952 to December 2000, and as predicted, the estimated maximum Sharpe ratio is related to the equity premium. In cross‐sectional asset‐pricing tests, both state variables have significant risk premia, which is consistent with Merton's ICAPM.