Properties of a specification test for the parametric form of the variance function in diffusion processes dXt = b (t,Xt) dt + sigma (t,Xt) dWt are discussed. The test is based on the estimation of certain integrals of the volatility function. If the volatility function does not depend on the...

Central limit theorem, quadratic variation, bipower variation

This paper provides theory as well as empirical results for pre-averaging estimators of the daily quadratic variation of asset prices. We derive jump robust inference for pre-averaging estimators, corresponding feasible central limit theorems and an explicit test on serial dependence in...

In this paper, we develop a penalized realized variance (PRV) estimator of the quadratic variation (QV) of a high-dimensional continuous Itô semimartingale. We adapt the principle idea of regularization from linear regression to covariance estimation in a continuous-time high-frequency setting....

We show how pre-averaging can be applied to the problem of measuring the ex-post covariance of financial asset returns under microstructure noise and non-synchronous trading. A pre-averaged realised covariance is proposed, and we present an asymptotic theory for this new estimator, which can be...

This paper presents a short survey on limit theorems for certain functionals of semimartingales, which are observed at high frequency. Our aim is to explain the main ideas of the theory to a broader audience. We introduce the concept of stable convergence, which is crucial for our purpose. We...