The general theory of prediction-based estimating functions for stochastic process models is reviewed and extended. Particular attention is given to optimal estimation, asymptotic theory and Gaussian processes. Several examples of applications are presented. In particular partial observation of...

A general theory of efficient estimation for ergodic diffusions sampled at high fre- quency is presented. High frequency sampling is now possible in many applications, in particular in finance. The theory is formulated in term of approximate martingale estimating functions and covers a large...

The Pearson diffusions is a flexible class of diffusions defined by having linear drift and quadratic squared diffusion coefficient. It is demonstrated that for this class explicit statistical inference is feasible. Explicit optimal martingale estimating func- tions are found, and the...