Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 November 2020
We study the predictive power of option-implied moment risk premia embedded in the conventional variance risk premium. We find that although the second-moment risk premium predicts market returns in short horizons with positive coefficients, the third-moment (fourth-moment) risk premium predicts market returns in medium horizons with negative (positive) coefficients. Combining the higher-moment risk premia with the second-moment risk premium improves the stock return predictability over multiple horizons, both in sample and out of sample. The finding is economically significant in an asset-allocation exercise and survives a series of robustness checks.
We are grateful to Hendrik Bessembinder (the editor) and David Schreindorfer (the referee) for extremely helpful guidance and suggestions. We thank Bakshi Gurdip, Bing Han, Anthony Neuberger, Cisil Sarisoy, Paul Schneider, George Tauchen, Fabio Trojani, Grigory Vilkov, Dacheng Xiu, Lai Xu, Nancy Xu, and Lu Zhang for helpful comments. We would also like to thank seminar participants at the 2018 China International Conference in Finance, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2017 European Finance Association Annual Conference, 2017 Asian Finance Association Annual Conference, Peking University Guanghua School of Management, and Tsinghua University PBC School of Finance. A previous version of this article has been circulated under the title “Variance Risk Premium, Higher-Order Risk Premium, and Expected Stock Returns.” All remaining errors are our own.