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A New Predictor of US. Real Economic Activity: The S&P 500 Option Implied Risk Aversion

Author

Listed:
  • Renato Faccini

    (Queen Mary University of London)

  • Eirini Konstantinidi

    (Alliance Manchester Business School - Accounting and Finance division)

  • George Skiadopoulos

    (Queen Mary University of London)

  • Sylvia Sarantopoulou-Chiourea

    (Independent Authority of Public Revenue)

Abstract

We propose a new predictor of U.S. real economic activity (REA), namely the representative investor’s implied relative risk aversion (IRRA) extracted from S&P 500 option prices. IRRA is forward-looking and hence, it is expected to be related to future economic conditions. We document that U.S. IRRA predicts U.S. REA both in- and out-of-sample once we control for well-known REA predictors and take into account their persistence. An increase (decrease) in IRRA predicts a decrease (increase) in REA. We extend the empirical analysis by extracting IRRA from the South Korea, UK, Japanese and German index option markets. We find that South Korea IRRA predicts the South Korea REA both in- and out-of-sample, as expected given the high liquidity of its index option market. We show that a parsimonious yet flexible production economy model calibrated to the U.S. economy can explain the documented negative relation between risk aversion and future economic growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Renato Faccini & Eirini Konstantinidi & George Skiadopoulos & Sylvia Sarantopoulou-Chiourea, 2018. "A New Predictor of US. Real Economic Activity: The S&P 500 Option Implied Risk Aversion," Working Papers 850, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    • Handle: RePEc:qmw:qmwecw:850
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    Cited by:

    1. Ni, Zhongxin & Wang, Linyu, 2023. "The predictability of skewness risk premium on stock returns: Evidence from Chinese market," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 576-594.
    2. Geert Bekaert & Eric C. Engstrom & Nancy R. Xu, 2022. "The Time Variation in Risk Appetite and Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(6), pages 3975-4004, June.
    3. Leopoldo Catania & Alessandra Luati & Pierluigi Vallarino, 2021. "Economic vulnerability is state dependent," CREATES Research Papers 2021-09, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    4. Guidolin, Massimo & Hansen, Erwin & Cabrera, Gabriel, 2025. "Time-varying risk aversion and international stock returns," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(PA).
    5. Chen, Zilin & Da, Zhi & Huang, Dashan & Wang, Liyao, 2023. "Presidential economic approval rating and the cross-section of stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(1), pages 106-131.
    6. Irma Alonso & Pedro Serrano & Antoni Vaello-Sebastià, 2021. "The impact of heterogeneous unconventional monetary policies on the expectations of market crashes," Working Papers 2127, Banco de España.
    7. Yabei Zhu & Xingguo Luo & Qi Xu, 2023. "Industry variance risk premium, cross‐industry correlation, and expected returns," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(1), pages 3-32, January.
    8. Ko Adachi & Kazuhiro Hiraki & Tomiyuki Kitamura, 2021. "Supplementary Paper Series for the "Assessment" (1): The Effects of the Bank of Japan's ETF Purchases on Risk Premia in the Stock Markets," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 21-E-3, Bank of Japan.
    9. Pan Tang & Yuwei Zhang, 2024. "China's business cycle forecasting: a machine learning approach," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 64(5), pages 2783-2811, November.
    10. Alejandro Bernales & Thanos Verousis & Nikolaos Voukelatos & Mengyu Zhang, 2020. "What do we know about individual equity options?," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(1), pages 67-91, January.
    11. Jiang, Zhengyun & Zhou, Xin, 2024. "Trading activity, risk aversion, and risk neutral skewness: Evidence from SSE 50ETF option," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 378-399.

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    JEL classification:

    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing
    • G17 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Financial Forecasting and Simulation

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