Arbitrage Bounds and the Time Series Properties of the Discount on UK Closed-End Mutual Funds

In a dataset of weekly observations over the period since 1990, the discount on UK closed-end mutual funds is shown to be nonstationary, but reverting to a nonzero long run mean. Although the long run discount could be explained by factors like management expenses etc., its short run ‡uctuations are harder to reconcile with an arbitrage-free equilibrium. In time series terms, they appear to exhibit heavily nonlinear behaviour, perhaps best represented by an Exponential Smooth- Transition Autoregressive (ESTAR) model.