This paper introduces a new family of Bayesian semi-parametric models for the conditional distribution of daily stock index returns. The proposed models capture key stylized facts of such returns, namely heavy tails, asymmetry, volatility clustering, and leverage. A Bayesian nonparametric prior...

The leverage effect refers to the generally negative correlation between an asset return and its changes of volatility. A natural estimate consists in using the empirical correlation between the daily returns and the changes of daily volatility estimated from high-frequency data. The puzzle lies...

Using recent advances in the econometrics literature, we disentangle from high frequency observations on the transaction prices of a large sample of NYSE stocks a fundamental component and a microstructure noise component. We then relate these statistical measurements of market microstructure...