There is an emerging consensus in empirical finance that realized volatility series typically display long range dependence with a memory parameter (d) around 0.4 (Andersen et al. (2001), Martens et al. (2004)). The present paper provides some analytical explanations for this evidence and shows...

In a simple model composed of a structural equation and identity, the finite sample distribution of the IV/LIML estimator is always bimodal and this is most apparent when the concentration parameter is small. Weak instrumentation is the energy that feeds the secondary mode and the coefficient in...

This paper overviews maximum likelihood and Gaussian methods of estimating continuous time models used in finance. Since the exact likelihood can be constructed only in special cases, much attention has been devoted to the development of methods designed to approximate the likelihood. These...

A model of price determination is proposed that incorporates flat trading features into an efficient price process. The model involves the superposition of a Brownian semimartingale process for the efficient price and a Bernoulli process that determines the extent of flat price trading. A limit...

A new methodology is proposed to estimate theoretical prices of financial contingent-claims whose values are dependent on some other underlying financial assets. In the literature the preferred choice of estimator is usually maximum likelihood (ML). ML has strong asymptotic justification but is...

In continuous time specifications, the prices of interest rate derivative securities depend crucially on the mean reversion parameter of the associated interest rate diffusion equation. This parameter is well known to be subject to estimation bias when standard methods like maximum likelihood...

This paper proposes a Gaussian estimator for nonlinear continuous time models of the short term interest rate. The approach is based on a stopping time argument that produces a normalizing transformation facilitating the use of a Gaussian likelihood. A Monte Carlo study shows that the finite...

This paper motivates and introduces a two-stage method for estimating diffusion processes based on discretely sampled observations. In the first stage we make use of the feasible central limit theory for realized volatility, as recently developed in Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard (2002), to...

This paper explores tests of the hypothesis that the tail thickness of a distribution is constant over time. Using Hill's conditional maximum likelihood estimator for the tail index of a distribution, tests of tail shape constancy are constructed that allow for an unknown breakpoint. The...

We propose a new nonparametric estimator for the volatility structure of the zero-coupon yield curve inside the Heath-Jarrow-Morton framework. The estimator incorporates cross-sectional restrictions along the maturity dimension, and also allows for measurement errors, which can arise from...