The Economics of Options-Implied Inflation Probability Density Functions

Jonathan Wright and Yuriy Kitsul
Additional contact information
Yuriy Kitsul: Federal Reserve Board

No 174, 2012 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

Abstract: Recently a market in options based on CPI inflation (inflation caps and floors) has emerged in the US. This paper uses quotes on these derivatives to construct probability densities for inflation. We study how these pdfs respond to news announcments, and ÃÂfind that the implied odds of deflation are sensitive to certain macroeconomic news releases. We compare the option-implied probability densities with those obtained by time series methods, and use this information to construct empirical pricing kernels. The options-implied densities assign considerably more mass to extreme inflation outcomes (either deflation or high inflation) than do their time series counterparts. This yields a U-shaped empirical pricing kernel, with investors having high marginal utility in states of the world characterized by either deflation or high inflation.

Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2012/paper_174.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The economics of options-implied inflation probability density functions (2013)
Working Paper: The Economics of Options-Implied Inflation Probability Density Functions (2012)
Working Paper: The Economics of Options-Implied Inflation Probability Density Functions (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:red:sed012:174

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2012 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics Society for Economic Dynamics Marina Azzimonti Department of Economics Stonybrook University 10 Nicolls Road Stonybrook NY 11790 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Zimmermann ().