We propose using the price range, a recently-neglected volatility proxy with a long history in finance, in the estimation of stochastic volatility models. We show both theoretically and empirically that the log range is approximately Gaussian, in sharp contrast to popular volatility proxies,...

We extend range-based volatility estimation to the multivariate case. In particular, we propose a range-based covariance estimator motivated by a key financial economic consideration, the absence of arbitrage, in addition to statistical considerations. We show that this estimator is highly...

This study documents high-frequency (daily) mutual fund return autocorrelations and examines the causes and consequences. We assert the cause to be nonsynchronous trading in the underlying assets of the fund, which presents investors with an option to (indirectly) trade those assets at stale...

We directly estimate annual trading costs for a sample of equity mutual funds and find that these costs are large and exhibit substantial cross sectional variation. Trading costs average 0.78% of fund assets per year and have an inter-quartile range of 0.59%. Trading costs, like expense ratios,...

There are many instances where financial claims trade at prices set by intermediaries. Pricing by an intermediary introduces the potential for economic distortions from innumerable sources. As one example, we show that nonsynchronous-trading generates predictable, readily exploitable, changes in...

It depends. If volatility fluctuates in a forecastable way, then volatility forecasts are useful for risk management; hence the interest in volatility forecastability in the risk management literature. Volatility forecastability, however, varies with horizon, and different horizons are relevant...

The prescriptions of modern financial risk management hinge critically on the associated characterization of the distribution of future returns (cf., Diebold, Gunther and Tay, 1998, and Diebold, Hahn and Tay, 1999). Because volatility persistence renders high-frequency returns temporally...

We show that the common practice of converting 1-day volatility estimates to h-day estimates by scaling by the sqaure root of h is inappropriate and produces overestimates of the variability of long-horizon volatility. We conclude that volatility models are best tailored to tasks: if interest...