We develop a simple method for forecasting and benchmarking consumer trial of new products. First, we extend the exponential trial growth models used in controlled test markets to the context of national product launches. This provides a marketing science benchmark against which our new approach...

We prove that the diffusion limit of Real-Time GARCH (RT-GARCH) exists if we introduce an auxiliary process to replace the squared return in the volatility process. The volatility of the diffusion follows an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck-type process which fails to be positive with probability one unless...