Abstract

This article provides several new insights into the economic sources of skewness. First, we document the differential pricing of individual equity options versus the market index and relate it to variations in return skewness. Second, we show how risk aversion introduces skewness in the risk-neutral density. Third, we derive laws that decompose individual return skewness into a systematic component and an idiosyncratic component. Empirical analysis of OEX options and 30 stocks demonstrates that individual riskneutral distributions differ from that of the market index by being far less negatively skewed. This article explains the presence and evolution of risk-neutral skewness over time and in the cross section of individual stocks. Skewness continues to occupy a prominent role in equity markets. In the traditional asset pricing literature, stocks with negative coskewness command a higher equilibrium risk compensation [see