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Stock market volatility clusters in time, carries a risk premium, is fractionally integrated, and exhibits asymmetric leverage effects relative to returns. This paper develops a first internally consistent equilibrium based explanation for these longstanding empirical facts. The model is cast in continuous-time and entirely self-contained, involving non-separable recursive preferences. We show that the qualitative theoretical implications from the new model match remarkably well with the distinct shapes and patterns in the sample autocorrelations of the volatility and the volatility risk premium, and the dynamic cross-correlations of the volatility measures with the returns calculated from actual high-frequency intra-day data on the S&P 500 aggregate market and VIX volatility indexes.

Stock market volatility clusters in time, appears fractionally integrated, carries a risk premium, and exhibits asymmetric leverage effects. At the same time, the volatility risk premium, defined by the difference between the risk-neutral and objective expectations of the volatility, features short memory. This paper develops the first internally consistent equilibrium-based explanation for all these empirical facts. Using newly available high-frequency intraday data for the S&P 500 and the VIX volatility index, the authors show that the qualitative implications from the new theoretical continuous-time model match remarkably well with the distinct shapes and patterns in the sample autocorrelations and dynamic cross-correlations actually observed in the data.

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