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.
AFA members can log in to view full-text articles below.
View past issues
Search the Journal of Finance:
Search results: 2.
The Crash of ʼ87: Was It Expected? The Evidence from Options Markets
Published: 07/01/1991 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1991.tb03775.x
DAVID S. BATES
Transactions prices of S&P 500 futures options over 1985‐1987 are examined for evidence of expectations prior to October 1987 of an impending stock market crash. First, it is shown that out‐of‐the‐money puts became unusually expensive during the year preceding the crash. Second, a model is derived for pricing American options on jump‐diffusion processes with systematic jump risk. The jump‐diffusion parameters implicit in options prices indicate that a crash was expected and that implicit distributions were negatively skewed during October 1986 to August 1987. Both approaches indicate no strong crash fears during the 2 months immediately preceding the crash.
How Crashes Develop: Intradaily Volatility and Crash Evolution
Published: 10/06/2018 | DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12732
DAVID S. BATES
This paper explores whether affine models with volatility jumps estimated on intradaily S&P 500 futures data over 1983 to 2008 can capture major daily outliers such as the 1987 stock market crash. Intradaily jumps in futures prices are typically small; self‐exciting but short‐lived volatility spikes capture intradaily and daily returns better. Multifactor models of the evolution of diffusive variance and jump intensities improve fits substantially, including out‐of‐sample over 2009 to 2016. The models capture reasonably well the conditional distributions of daily returns and realized variance outliers, but underpredict realized variance inliers. I also examine option pricing implications.