This paper reexamines the issue of unspanned stochastic volatility (USV) in bond markets and the puzzle of poor relative pricing between bonds and bond options. I make a distinction between the "weak USV" and the "strong USV" scenarios, and analyze the evidence for each of them. I argue that the poor bonds/options relative pricing in the extant literature is not necessarily evidence for the strong USV scenario, and show that a maximally flexible 2-factor quadratic-Gaussian model (a non-USV model) estimated without bond options data can capture much of the movement in bond option prices. Dropping the positive-definiteness requirement for nominal interest rates and adopting "regularized" estimations turn out to be important for obtaining sensible results.
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Paper provided by Bank for International Settlements in its series BIS Working Papers with number
239.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
David K. Backus & Jonathan H. Wright, 2007.
"Cracking the Conundrum,"
NBER Working Papers
13419, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
David K. Backus & Jonathan H. Wright, 2007.
"Cracking the Conundrum,"
Working Papers
07-22, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
[Downloadable!]
David M. Cutler & James M. Poterba & Lawrence H. Summers, 1989.
"What Moves Stock Prices?,"
NBER Working Papers
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[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
David H. Cutler & James M. Poterba & Lawrence H. Summers, 1988.
"What Moves Stock Prices?,"
Working papers
487, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
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