Macroeconomic determinants of stock volatility and volatility premiums

How does stock market volatility relate to the business cycle? We develop, and estimate, a no-arbitrage model, and find that (i) the level and fluctuations of stock volatility are largely explained by business cycle factors and (ii) some unobserved factor contributes to nearly 20% to the overall variation in volatility, although not to its ups and downs. Instead, this "volatility of volatility" relates to the business cycle. Finally, volatility risk-premiums are strongly countercyclical, even more than stock volatility, and partially explain the large swings of the VIX index during the 2007-2009 subprime crisis, which our model captures in out-of-sample experiments. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.