Do financial derivatives enhance or impede innovation? We aim to answer this question by examining the relationship between equity options markets and standard measures of firm innovation. Our baseline results show that firms with more options trading activity generate more patents and patent citations per dollar of R&D invested. We then investigate how more active options markets affect firms' innovation strategy. Our results suggest that firms with greater trading activity pursue a more creative, diverse and risky innovation strategy. We discuss potential underlying mechanisms and show that options appear to mitigate managerial career concerns that would induce managers to take actions that boost short-term performance measures. Finally, using several econometric specifications that try to account for the potential endogeneity of options trading, we argue that the positive effect of options trading on firm innovation is causal.

This book is a collection of original papers by Robert Jarrow that contributed to significant advances in financial economics. Divided into three parts, Part I concerns option pricing theory and its foundations. The papers here deal with the famous Black-Scholes-Merton model, characterizations of the American put option, and the first applications of arbitrage pricing theory to market manipulation and liquidity risk.Part II relates to pricing derivatives under stochastic interest rates. Included is the paper introducing the famous Heath-Jarrow-Morton (HJM) model, together with papers on topics like the characterization of the difference between forward and futures prices, the forward price martingale measure, and applications of the HJM model to foreign currencies and commodities.Part III deals with the pricing of financial derivatives considering both stochastic interest rates and the likelihood of default. Papers cover the reduced form credit risk model, in particular the original Jarrow and Turnbull model, the Markov model for credit rating transitions, counterparty risk, and diversifiable default risk.