Download or read book The Implied Volatility Term Structure of Stock Index Options written by Scott Mixon and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper tests the expectations hypothesis of the term structure of implied volatility for several national stock market indices (Samp;P 500, FTSE 100, DAX, CAC, and Nikkei 225). The tests indicate that the slope of at-the-money implied volatility over different maturities has predictive ability for future short dated implied volatility, although not to the extent predicted by the expectations hypothesis. Equivalently, the forward implied volatility is a biased forecast of future implied volatility. The low forecast power may be due to a failure to control for a risk premium in the prices of options. Evidence is presented that a time varying risk premium that increases in volatility is consistent with the results. Including a volatility risk proxy in the specification improves the forecasting ability beyond that embedded in the implied volatility term structure.