The Nadaraya-Watson estimator of regression is known to be highly sensitive to the presence of outliers in the sample. A possible way of robustication consists in using local L-estimates of regression. Whereas the local L-estimation is traditionally done using an empirical conditional...

Classical parametric estimation methods applied to nonlinear regression and limited-dependent-variable models are very sensitive to misspecification and data errors. On the other hand, semiparametric and nonparametric methods, which are not restricted by parametric assumptions, require more data...

It is common practice to identify the number and sources of shocks that move implied volatilities across space and time by applying Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to pooled covariance matrices of changes in implied volatilities. This approach, however, is likely to result in a loss of...