We study the impact of parameter and model uncertainty on the left-tail of predictive densities and in particular on VaR forecasts. To this end, we evaluate the predictive performance of several GARCH-type models estimated via Bayesian and maximum likelihood techniques. In addition to individual...

We consider a logistic transform of the monthly US unemployment rate. For this time series, a pseudo out-of-sample forecasting competition is held between linear and nonlinear models and averages of these models. To combine predictive densities, we use two complementary methods: Bayesian model...

An important aspect of portfolio risk management is the analysis of the overall risk with respect to the allocations to the underlying assets. Marginal risk is the traditional tool used by portfolio managers to accomplish this. However, this metric is only meaningful when a position is levered...

This paper presents the R package bayesGARCH which provides functions for the Bayesian estimation of the parsimonious but effective GARCH(1,1) model with Student-t innovations. The estimation procedure is fully automatic and thus avoids the time-consuming and difficult task of tuning a sampling...

This MSc thesis proposes the analysis of high frequency ODAX options during October 2001. It consists of three chapters investigating respectively market activity, arbitrage opportunities and performance of various implied volatility surfaces.

An important aspect of portfolio risk management is the analysis of the overall risk with respect to the assets' allocations. Marginal risk is the traditional tool, however, this metric is only meaningful when a position is levered or when the proceeds from the sale of a position are put in the...

This article describes the R package DEoptim which implements the differential evolution algorithm for the global optimization of a real-valued function of a real-valued parameter vector. The implementation of differential evolution in DEoptim interfaces with C code for efficiency. The utility...

The R package DEoptim implements the differential evolution algorithm. This algorithm is an evolutionary technique similar to genetic algorithms that is useful for the solution of global optimization problems. In this note we provide an introduction to the package and demonstrate its utility for...

This chapter proposes an up-to-date review of estimation strategies available for the Bayesian inference of GARCH-type models. The emphasis is put on a novel efficient procedure named AdMitIS. The methodology automatically constructs a mixture of Student-t distributions as an approximation to...

The estimation of a jump-diffusion model via Differential Evolution is presented. Finding the maximum likelihood estimator for such processes is a tedious task due to the multimodality of the likelihood function. The performance of the Differential Evolution algorithm is compared to standard...