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Journal of Financial Economics Vol. 50 No. 2 1998

The relation between implied and realized volatility

Bent Jesper Christensen1; Nagpurnanand Prabhala2

1 Aarhus University · 2 Yale University

open access

Abstract

Previous research finds the volatility implied by S&P 100 index option prices to be a biased and inefficient forecast of future volatility and to contain little or no incremental information beyond that in past realized volatility. In contrast, we find that implied volatility outperforms past volatility in forecasting future volatility and even subsumes the information content of past volatility in some of our specifications. Our results differ from previous studies because we use longer time series and nonoverlapping data. A regime shift around the October 1987 crash explains why implied volatility is more biased in previous work.

DOI
10.1016/s0304-405x(98)00034-8
Volume
50
Issue
2
Pages
125-150
Language
en
Sources
crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex

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