Simulated Likelihood Estimators for Discretely Observed Jump-Diffusions

This paper develops an unbiased Monte Carlo approximation to the transition density of a jump-diffusion process with state-dependent drift, volatility, jump intensity, and jump magnitude. The approximation is used to construct a likelihood estimator of the parameters of a jump-diffusion observed at fixed time intervals that need not be short. The estimator is asymptotically unbiased for any sample size. It has the same large-sample asymptotic properties as the true but uncomputable likelihood estimator. Numerical results illustrate its properties