This article presents a stochastic equilibrium model for environmental markets that allows us to study the characteristic properties of emission permit prices induced by the design of today’s cap-and-trade systems. We characterize emission permits as highly nonlinear contingent claims on economy-wide emissions and reveal their hybrid nature between investment and consumption assets. Our model makes predictions about the dynamics and volatility structure of emission permit prices, the forward price curve, and the implications for option pricing in this market. Empirical evidence from existing emissions markets shows that the model explains the stylized facts of emission permit prices and related derivatives.

The growing share of renewables paired with their intermittent nature introduces significant new challenges for market participants along the value-chain in power markets. Taking the view of an owner of such a physical renewable asset we showcase the management of the associated stochastic production risks in Germany, one of the most dynamic electricity markets and the largest producer of renewable energy in the EU-28. We find that unhedged renewable portfolios are very risky and existing vanilla derivatives are poor hedges. New exotic quantity-related weather contracts proposed by major energy exchanges (EEX) show a lot of potential but are still very illiquid. Their hedging performance is heavily driven by the market wide renewable generation portfolio which, in its current state, favors specific regions. In the long-run price-related derivatives will transform into more useful hedging instruments due to the growing importance of renewables in the formation of wholesale market prices.

This paper sheds new light on higher-order price risks in crude oil markets. A model-free analysis reveals that crude oil variance risk behaves fundamentally different from variance risk in equity markets. Most importantly, a skewness swap is no valid hedge for a variance swap and investors fear large price jumps in both directions. A model-based assessment confirms this and reveals that while stochastic volatility is important to capture the statistical properties such as volatility clusters and time-varying variance swap rates, only jump risk seems to be priced with a premium. Empirical evidence from a pricing and hedging exercise confirms these findings.

We analyze the impact of market frictions on the trading volume and liquidity premia of finite-maturity assets when investors differ in their trading needs. Our equilibrium model generates a clientele effect (frequently trading investors hold only short-term assets) and predicts i) a hump-shaped relation between trading volume and maturity, ii) lower trading volumes of older compared with younger assets, iii) an increasing liquidity term structure from ask prices, iv) a decreasing or U-shaped liquidity term structure from bid prices, and v) spillovers of liquidity from short-term to long-term maturities. Empirical tests for U.S. corporate bonds support our theoretical predictions.