The pricing accuracy and pricing performance of local volatility models crucially depends on absence of arbitrage in the implied volatility surface: an input implied volatility surface that is not arbitrage-free invariably results in negative transition probabilities and/ or negative local...

Equity index implied volatility functions are known to be excessively skewed in comparison with implied volatility at the single stock level. We study this stylized fact for the case of a major German stock index, the DAX, by recovering index implied volatility from simulating the 30-dimensional...

We investigate the relationship between inflation and price variation using highly disaggregated, weekly price data for consumption goods recorded in Germany during 1995, a low-inflation period. We find a significant positive correlation between the rates of price change and price dispersion,...

For an additive autoregression model, we study two types of testing problems. First, a parametric specification of a component function is compared against a nonparametric fit. Second, two nonparametric fits of two different time periods are tested for equality. We apply the theory to a...

We suggest a semi-nonparametric estimator for the call-option price surface. The estimator is a bivariate tensor-product B-spline. To enforce no-arbitrage constraints across strikes and expiry dates, we establish sufficient no-arbitrage conditions on the control net of the B-spline surface. The...

We evaluate the relevance of covariances in the transmission mechanism of variance spillovers across the US stock, US bond and gold markets from July 2003 to December 2012. For that purpose, we perform a comparative spillover analysis between a model that considers covariances and a model that...

We introduce the notion of realized copula. Based on assumptions of the marginal distri- butions of daily stock returns and a copula family, realized copula is dened as the copula structure materialized in realized covariance estimated from within-day high-frequency data. Copula parameters are...