IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2021-63.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

When Uncertainty and Volatility Are Disconnected: Implications for Asset Pricing and Portfolio Performance

Author

Listed:

Abstract

We analyze an environment where the uncertainty in the equity market return and its volatility are both stochastic and may be potentially disconnected. We solve a representative investor's optimal asset allocation and derive the resulting conditional equity premium and risk-free rate in equilibrium. Our empirical analysis shows that the equity premium appears to be earned for facing uncertainty, especially high uncertainty that is disconnected from lower volatility, rather than for facing volatility as traditionally assumed. Incorporating the possibility of a disconnect between volatility and uncertainty significantly improves portfolio performance, over and above the performance obtained by conditioning on volatility only.

Suggested Citation

  • Yacine Aït-Sahalia & Felix Matthys & Emilio Osambela & Ronnie Sircar, 2021. "When Uncertainty and Volatility Are Disconnected: Implications for Asset Pricing and Portfolio Performance," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-063, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2021-63
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2021.063
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2021063pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17016/FEDS.2021.063?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George Chacko & Luis M. Viceira, 2005. "Dynamic Consumption and Portfolio Choice with Stochastic Volatility in Incomplete Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(4), pages 1369-1402.
    2. Rhys Bidder & Ian Dew-Becker, 2016. "Long-Run Risk Is the Worst-Case Scenario," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2494-2527, September.
    3. Tim Bollerslev & George Tauchen & Hao Zhou, 2009. "Expected Stock Returns and Variance Risk Premia," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(11), pages 4463-4492, November.
    4. Lars Peter Hansen & Thomas J Sargent, 2014. "Robust Control and Model Misspecification," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: UNCERTAINTY WITHIN ECONOMIC MODELS, chapter 6, pages 155-216, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Ang, Andrew & Hodrick, Robert J. & Xing, Yuhang & Zhang, Xiaoyan, 2009. "High idiosyncratic volatility and low returns: International and further U.S. evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 1-23, January.
    6. Hansen, Lars Peter & Sargent, Thomas J., 2011. "Robustness and ambiguity in continuous time," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(3), pages 1195-1223, May.
    7. Pástor, Ľuboš & Veronesi, Pietro, 2013. "Political uncertainty and risk premia," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 520-545.
    8. Lubos Pástor & Pietro Veronesi, 2012. "Uncertainty about Government Policy and Stock Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(4), pages 1219-1264, August.
    9. Amengual, Dante & Xiu, Dacheng, 2018. "Resolution of policy uncertainty and sudden declines in volatility," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 203(2), pages 297-315.
    10. Campbell, John Y. & Giglio, Stefano & Polk, Christopher & Turley, Robert, 2018. "An intertemporal CAPM with stochastic volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(2), pages 207-233.
    11. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2016. "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1593-1636.
    12. Maenhout, Pascal J., 2006. "Robust portfolio rules and detection-error probabilities for a mean-reverting risk premium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 128(1), pages 136-163, May.
    13. Glosten, Lawrence R & Jagannathan, Ravi & Runkle, David E, 1993. "On the Relation between the Expected Value and the Volatility of the Nominal Excess Return on Stocks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(5), pages 1779-1801, December.
    14. Jonathan Brogaard & Andrew Detzel, 2015. "The Asset-Pricing Implications of Government Economic Policy Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(1), pages 3-18, January.
    15. Amit Goyal & Pedro Santa-Clara, 2003. "Idiosyncratic Risk Matters!," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(3), pages 975-1008, June.
    16. Mohammad R. Jahan-Parvar & Hening Liu, 2014. "Ambiguity Aversion and Asset Prices in Production Economies," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(10), pages 3060-3097.
    17. Jun Liu, 2005. "An Equilibrium Model of Rare-Event Premia and Its Implication for Option Smirks," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(1), pages 131-164.
    18. Danilo Cascaldi-Garcia & Cisil Sarisoy & Juan M. Londono & Bo Sun & Deepa D. Datta & Thiago Ferreira & Olesya Grishchenko & Mohammad R. Jahan-Parvar & Francesca Loria & Sai Ma & Marius Rodriguez & Ilk, 2023. "What Is Certain about Uncertainty?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(2), pages 624-654, June.
    19. Timothy Cogley & Riccardo Colacito & Lars Peter Hansen & Thomas J. Sargent, 2008. "Robustness and U.S. Monetary Policy Experimentation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(8), pages 1599-1623, December.
    20. Pascal J. Maenhout, 2004. "Robust Portfolio Rules and Asset Pricing," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(4), pages 951-983.
    21. Kyle Jurado & Sydney C. Ludvigson & Serena Ng, 2015. "Measuring Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 1177-1216, March.
    22. Lars Peter Hansen & Thomas J Sargent, 2014. "A Quartet of Semigroups for Model Specification, Robustness, Prices of Risk, and Model Detection," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: UNCERTAINTY WITHIN ECONOMIC MODELS, chapter 4, pages 83-143, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    23. Scotti, Chiara, 2016. "Surprise and uncertainty indexes: Real-time aggregation of real-activity macro-surprises," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 1-19.
    24. Gonçalo Faria & João Correia-da-Silva, 2016. "Is stochastic volatility relevant for dynamic portfolio choice under ambiguity?," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(7), pages 601-626, May.
    25. A Ronald Gallant & Mohammad R Jahan-Parvar & Hening Liu, 2019. "Does Smooth Ambiguity Matter for Asset Pricing?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(9), pages 3617-3666.
    26. Brenner, Menachem & Izhakian, Yehuda, 2018. "Asset pricing and ambiguity: Empirical evidence⁎," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(3), pages 503-531.
    27. Gilboa, Itzhak & Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 141-153, April.
    28. Philipp Karl Illeditsch, 2011. "Ambiguous Information, Portfolio Inertia, and Excess Volatility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(6), pages 2213-2247, December.
    29. Yu, Jianfeng & Yuan, Yu, 2011. "Investor sentiment and the mean-variance relation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 367-381, May.
    30. Merton, Robert C., 1980. "On estimating the expected return on the market : An exploratory investigation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 323-361, December.
    31. Lars Peter Hansen & Thomas J Sargent, 2014. "Robust Control and Model Uncertainty," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: UNCERTAINTY WITHIN ECONOMIC MODELS, chapter 5, pages 145-154, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    32. Barroso, Pedro & Detzel, Andrew, 2021. "Do limits to arbitrage explain the benefits of volatility-managed portfolios?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(3), pages 744-767.
    33. Izhakian, Yehuda, 2020. "A theoretical foundation of ambiguity measurement," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    34. French, Kenneth R. & Schwert, G. William & Stambaugh, Robert F., 1987. "Expected stock returns and volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 3-29, September.
    35. Itamar Drechsler & Amir Yaron, 2011. "What's Vol Got to Do with It," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(1), pages 1-45.
    36. Bali, Turan G. & Brown, Stephen J. & Tang, Yi, 2017. "Is economic uncertainty priced in the cross-section of stock returns?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(3), pages 471-489.
    37. Lien, Donald & Sun, Yuchen & Zhang, Chengsi, 2021. "Uncertainty, confidence, and monetary policy in China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 1347-1358.
    38. Kozeniauskas, Nicholas & Orlik, Anna & Veldkamp, Laura, 2018. "What are uncertainty shocks?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 1-15.
    39. Amit Goyal & Pedro Santa‐Clara, 2003. "Idiosyncratic Risk Matters!," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(3), pages 975-1007, June.
    40. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1978. "Asset Prices in an Exchange Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(6), pages 1429-1445, November.
    41. Itamar Drechsler, 2013. "Uncertainty, Time-Varying Fear, and Asset Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(5), pages 1843-1889, October.
    42. Jun Liu, 2007. "Portfolio Selection in Stochastic Environments," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(1), pages 1-39, January.
    43. Alan Moreira & Tyler Muir, 2017. "Volatility-Managed Portfolios," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(4), pages 1611-1644, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nakajima, Jouchi, 2022. "Macroeconomic uncertainty matters: A nonlinear effect of financial volatility on real economic activity," Discussion paper series HIAS-E-121, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University.
    2. Benjamin Dennis, 2022. "Climate Change and Financial Policy: A Literature Review," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2022-048, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Markus Leippold & Felix Matthys, 2022. "Economic Policy Uncertainty and the Yield Curve [Pricing the term structure with linear regressions]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 26(4), pages 751-797.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Danilo Cascaldi-Garcia & Cisil Sarisoy & Juan M. Londono & Bo Sun & Deepa D. Datta & Thiago Ferreira & Olesya Grishchenko & Mohammad R. Jahan-Parvar & Francesca Loria & Sai Ma & Marius Rodriguez & Ilk, 2023. "What Is Certain about Uncertainty?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(2), pages 624-654, June.
    2. Agarwal, Vikas & Arisoy, Y. Eser & Naik, Narayan Y., 2017. "Volatility of aggregate volatility and hedge fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 491-510.
    3. Aït-Sahalia, Yacine & Matthys, Felix, 2019. "Robust consumption and portfolio policies when asset prices can jump," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 1-56.
    4. Sujoy Mukerji & Han N. Ozsoylev & Jean‐Marc Tallon, 2023. "Trading Ambiguity: A Tale Of Two Heterogeneities," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(3), pages 1127-1164, August.
    5. Wei, Pengyu & Yang, Charles & Zhuang, Yi, 2023. "Robust consumption and portfolio choice with derivatives trading," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(2), pages 832-850.
    6. Kim, Eung-Bin & Byun, Suk-Joon, 2021. "Risk, ambiguity, and equity premium: International evidence," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 321-335.
    7. Bianconi, Marcelo & Esposito, Federico & Sammon, Marco, 2021. "Trade policy uncertainty and stock returns," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    8. Yu, Deshui & Huang, Difang, 2023. "Cross-sectional uncertainty and expected stock returns," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 321-340.
    9. Escobar, Marcos & Ferrando, Sebastian & Rubtsov, Alexey, 2018. "Dynamic derivative strategies with stochastic interest rates and model uncertainty," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 49-71.
    10. Lee, Kiryoung & Jeon, Yoontae & Nam, Eun-Young, 2021. "Chinese Economic Policy Uncertainty and the Cross-Section of U.S. Asset Returns," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 1063-1077.
    11. Jang, Bong-Gyu & Park, Seyoung, 2016. "Ambiguity and optimal portfolio choice with Value-at-Risk constraint," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 158-176.
    12. Jang, Bong-Gyu & Lee, Seungkyu & Lim, Byung Hwa, 2016. "Robust consumption and portfolio rules with time-varying model confidence," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 342-352.
    13. Cheng, Mengyao, 2022. "Legislative gridlock and stock return dispersion around roll-call votes," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    14. Flor, Christian Riis & Hesel, Søren, 2015. "Uncertain dynamics, correlation effects, and robust investment decisions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 278-298.
    15. Nartea, Gilbert V. & Bai, Hengyu & Wu, Ji, 2020. "Investor sentiment and the economic policy uncertainty premium," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    16. Yi, Bo & Li, Zhongfei & Viens, Frederi G. & Zeng, Yan, 2013. "Robust optimal control for an insurer with reinsurance and investment under Heston’s stochastic volatility model," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 601-614.
    17. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Menelaos Karanasos & Stavroula Yfanti, 2019. "Macro-Financial Linkages in the High-Frequency Domain: The Effects of Uncertainty on Realized Volatility," CESifo Working Paper Series 8000, CESifo.
    18. Chen, Xiaoyu & Chiang, Thomas C., 2020. "Empirical investigation of changes in policy uncertainty on stock returns—Evidence from China’s market," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    19. Bin Wei, 2021. "Ambiguity, Long-Run Risks, and Asset Prices," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2021-21, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    20. Nengjiu Ju & Jianjun Miao, 2012. "Ambiguity, Learning, and Asset Returns," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(2), pages 559-591, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Risk Aversion; Stochastic Uncertainty; Stochastic Volatility; Uncertainty Aversion; Volatility and Uncertainty Disconnect;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2021-63. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.