We consider two kinds of stochastic volatility models. Both kinds of models contain a stationary volatility process, the density of which, at a fixed instant in time, we aim to estimate.
We discuss discrete time models where for instance a log price process is modeled as the product of a volatility process and i.i.d. noise. We also consider samples of certain continuous time diffusion processes. The sampled time instants will be be equidistant with vanishing distance.
A Fourier type deconvolution kernel density estimator based on the logarithm of the squared processes is proposed to estimate the volatility density. Expansions of the bias and bounds on the variances are derived.
We consider discrete time models for asset prices with a stationary volatility process. We aim at estimating the multivariate density of this process at a set of consecutive time instants. A Fourier type deconvolution kernel density estimator based on the logarithm of the squared process is proposed to estimate the volatility density. Expansions of the bias and bounds on the variance are derived.
We consider a continuous-time stochastic volatility model. The model contains a stationary volatility process, the multivariate density of the finite dimensional distributions of which we aim to estimate. We assume that we observe the process at discrete instants in time. The sampling times will be equidistant with vanishing distance. A multivariate Fourier-type deconvolution kernel density estimator based on the logarithm of the squared processes is proposed to estimate the multivariate volatility density. An expansion of the bias and a bound on the variance are derived. Key words: stochastic…
We provide a nonparametric method for the computation of instantaneous multivariate volatility for continuous semi-martingales, which is based on Fourier analysis. The co-volatility is reconstructed as a stochastic function of time by establishing a connection between the Fourier transform of the prices process and the Fourier transform of the co-volatility process. A nonparametric estimator is derived given a discrete unevenly spaced and asynchronously sampled observations of the asset price processes. The asymptotic properties of the random estimator are studied: namely, consistency in proba…
An aggregated method of nonparametric estimators based on time-domain and state-domain estimators is proposed and studied. To attenuate the curse of dimensionality, we propose a factor modeling strategy. We first investigate the asymptotic behavior of nonparametric estimators of the volatility matrix in the time domain and in the state domain. Asymptotic normality is separately established for nonparametric estimators in the time domain and state domain. These two estimators are asymptotically independent. Hence, they can be combined, through a dynamic weighting scheme, to improve the efficien…
This work develops change-point methods for statistics of high-frequency data. The main interest is in the volatility of an Itô semi-martingale, the latter being discretely observed over a fixed time horizon. We construct a minimax-optimal test to discriminate continuous paths from paths comprising volatility jumps. This is embedded into a more general theory to infer the smoothness of volatilities. In a high-frequency framework we prove weak convergence of the test statistic under the hypothesis to an extreme value distribution. Moreover, we develop methods to infer changes in the Hurst param…
Stochastic volatility modelling of financial processes has become increasingly popular. The proposed models usually contain a stationary volatility process. We will motivate and review several nonparametric methods for estimation of the density of the volatility process. Both models based on discretely sampled continuous time processes and discrete time models will be discussed. The key insight for the analysis is a transformation of the volatility density estimation problem to a deconvolution model for which standard methods exist. Three type of nonparametric density estimators are reviewed: …
Consider discrete time observations (X_{\ellδ})_{1\leq \ell \leq n+1}$ of the process $X$ satisfying $dX_t= \sqrt{V_t} dB_t$, with $V_t$ a one-dimensional positive diffusion process independent of the Brownian motion $B$. For both the drift and the diffusion coefficient of the unobserved diffusion $V$, we propose nonparametric least square estimators, and provide bounds for theirrisk. Estimators are chosen among a collection of functions belonging to a finite dimensional space whose dimension is selected by a data driven procedure. Implementation on simulated data illustrates how the method wo…
The nonparametric volatility estimation problem of a scalar diffusion process observed at equidistant time points is addressed. Using the spectral representation of the volatility in terms of the invariant density and an eigenpair of the infinitesimal generator the first known estimator that attains the minimax optimal convergence rates for both high and low-frequency observations is constructed. The proofs are based on a posteriori error bounds for generalized eigenvalue problems as well as the path properties of scalar diffusions and stochastic analysis. The finite sample performance is illu…
In this paper, we present the double smoothed nonparametric approach for infinitesimal conditional volatility of jump-diffusion model based on high frequency data. Under certain minimal conditions, we obtain the strong consistency and asymptotic normality for the estimator as the time span $T \rightarrow \infty$ and the sample interval $Δ_{n} \rightarrow 0.$ The procedure and asymptotic behavior can be applied for both null Harris recurrent and positive Harris recurrent processes.
During the last decades there has been increasing interest in modeling the volatility of financial data. Several parametric models have been proposed to this aim, starting from ARCH, GARCH and their variants, but often it is hard to evaluate which one is the most suitable for the analyzed financial data. In this paper we focus on nonparametric analysis of the volatility function for mixing processes. Our approach encompasses many parametric frameworks and supplies several tools which can be used to give evidence against or in favor of a specific parametric model: nonparametric function estimat…
In this paper, we are concerned with nonparametric inference on the volatility of volatility process in stochastic volatility models. We construct several estimators for its integrated version in a high-frequency setting, all based on increments of spot volatility estimators. Some of those are positive by construction, others are bias corrected in order to attain the optimal rate $n^{-1/4}$. Associated central limit theorems are proven which can be widely used in practice, as they are the key to essentially all tools in model validation for stochastic volatility models. As an illustration we g…
The partially observed linear Gaussian system of stochastic differential equations with low noise in observations is considered. A kernel-type estimators are used for estimation of the quadratic variation of the derivative of the limit of the observed process. Then this estimator is used for nonparametric estimation of the integral of the square of volatility of unobservable component. This estimator is also used for construction of substitution estimators in the case where the drift in observable component and the volatility of the state component depend on some unknown parameter. Then this s…
We consider the models Y_{i,n}=\int_0^{i/n} σ(s)dW_s+τ(i/n)ε_{i,n}, and \tilde Y_{i,n}=σ(i/n)W_{i/n}+τ(i/n)ε_{i,n}, i=1,...,n, where W_t denotes a standard Brownian motion and ε_{i,n} are centered i.i.d. random variables with E(ε_{i,n}^2)=1 and finite fourth moment. Furthermore, σand τare unknown deterministic functions and W_t and (ε_{1,n},...,ε_{n,n}) are assumed to be independent processes. Based on a spectral decomposition of the covariance structures we derive series estimators for σ^2 and τ^2 and investigate their rate of convergence of the MISE in dependence of their smoothness. To this…
With the availability of high frequency financial data, nonparametric estimation of volatility of an asset return process becomes feasible. A major problem is how to estimate the volatility consistently and efficiently, when the observed asset returns contain error or noise, for example, in the form of microstructure noise. The former (consistency) has been addressed heavily in the recent literature, however, the resulting estimator is not quite efficient. In Zhang, Mykland and Ait-Sahalia (2003), the best estimator converges to the true volatility only at the rate of n^{-1/6}. In this paper, …
Confidence intervals and joint confidence sets are constructed for the nonparametric calibration of exponential Lévy models based on prices of European options. To this end, we show joint asymptotic normality in the spectral calibration method for the estimators of the volatility, the drift, the jump intensity and the Lévy density at finitely many points.
We study the non-parametric estimation of an unknown stationary density fV of an unobserved strictly stationary volatility process $(\bm V_t)_{t\geq 0}$ on $\IRp^2 := (0,\infty)^2$ based on discrete-time observations in a stochastic volatility model. We identify the underlying multiplicative measurement error model and build an estimator based on the estimation of the Mellin transform of the scaled, integrated volatility process and a spectral cut-off regularisation of the inverse of the Mellin transform. We prove that the proposed estimator leads to a consistent estimation strategy. A fully d…
This manuscript is a supplemental document providing the omitted material for our paper entitled "Nonparametric kernel estimation of the probability density function of regression errors using estimated residuals" [arXiv:1010.0439]. The paper is submitted to Journal of Nonparametric Statistics.
An adaptive nonparametric estimation procedure is constructed for the estimation problem of heteroscedastic regression when the noise variance depends on the unknown regression. A non-asymptotic upper bound for a quadratic risk (an oracle inequality) is constructed.
The paper deals with the nonparametric estimation problem at a given fixed point for an autoregressive model with unknown distributed noise. Kernel estimate modifications are proposed. Asymptotic minimax and efficiency properties for proposed estimators are shown.
We consider Stochastic Volatility processes with heavy tails and possible long memory in volatility. We study the limiting conditional distribution of future events given that some present or past event was extreme (i.e. above a level which tends to infinity). Even though extremes of stochastic volatility processes are asymptotically independent (in the sense of extreme value theory), these limiting conditional distributions differ from the i.i.d. case. We introduce estimators of these limiting conditional distributions and study their asymptotic properties. If volatility has long memory, then…
This paper is devoted to the nonparametric estimation of the derivative of the regression function in a nonparametric regression model. We implement a very efficient and easy to handle statistical procedure based on the derivative of the recursive Nadaraya-Watson estimator. We establish the almost sure convergence as well as the asymptotic normality for our estimates. We also illustrate our nonparametric estimation procedure on simulated and real life data associated with sea shores water quality and valvometry.
This paper provides a semiparametric model of estimating states of the volatility defined as the squared diffusion coefficient of a stochastic differential equation. Without assuming any functional form of the volatility function, we consider the volatility state as an unobservable state in a state space model and estimate it by filtering. By using the estimates, we can draw the information on what kind of functions the volatility has behind the observable state of the process. We also prove the consistency of the model in the sense that estimated states converges to the true ones as the obser…
This article studies nonparametric methods to estimate the co-integrated volatility for multi-dimensional Lévy processes with high frequency data. We construct a spectral estimator for the co-integrated volatility and prove minimax rates for an appropriate bounded nonparametric class of semimartingales. Given $ n $ observations of increments over intervals of length $1/n$, the rates of convergence are $1 / \sqrt{n} $ if $ r \leq 1 $ and $ (n\log n)^{(r-2)/2} $ if $ r>1 $, which are optimal in a minimax sense. We bound the co-jump index activity from below with the harmonic mean. Finally, we as…
The paper deals with asymptotic properties of the adaptive procedure proposed in the author paper (2007) for estimation of unknown nonparametric regression. We prove that this procedure is asymptotically efficient for a quadratic risk. It means that the asymptotic quadratic risk for this procedure coincides with a sharp lower bound.
This paper deals with the consistency, a rate of convergence and the asymptotic distribution of a nonparametric estimator of the trend in the Skorokhod reflection problem defined by a fractional SDE and a Moreau sweeping process.
We establish the asymptotic normality of the kernel type estimator for the regression function constructed from quasi-associated data when the explanatory variable takes its values in a separable Hilbert space.
We study the nonparametric estimators of the infinitesimal coefficients of the second-order jump-diffusion models. Under the mild conditions, we obtain the weak consistency and the asymptotic normalities of the estimators.
We consider nonparametric statistical inference for Lévy processes sampled irregularly, at low frequency. The estimation of the jump dynamics as well as the estimation of the distributional density are investigated. Non-asymptotic risk bounds are derived and the corresponding rates of convergence are discussed under global as well as local regularity assumptions. Moreover, minimax optimality is proved for the estimator of the jump measure. Some numerical examples are given to illustrate the practical performance of the estimation procedure.
High-frequency data observed on the prices of financial assets are commonly modeled by diffusion processes with micro-structure noise, and realized volatility-based methods are often used to estimate integrated volatility. For problems involving a large number of assets, the estimation objects we face are volatility matrices of large size. The existing volatility estimators work well for a small number of assets but perform poorly when the number of assets is very large. In fact, they are inconsistent when both the number, $p$, of the assets and the average sample size, $n$, of the price data …
Nonparametric identification and maximum likelihood estimation for finite-state hidden Markov models are investigated. We obtain identification of the parameters as well as the order of the Markov chain if the transition probability matrices have full-rank and are ergodic, and if the state-dependent distributions are all distinct, but not necessarily linearly independent. Based on this identification result, we develop nonparametric maximum likelihood estimation theory. First, we show that the asymptotic contrast, the Kullback--Leibler divergence of the hidden Markov model, identifies the true…
We consider nonparametric estimation for functional autoregressive processes with Markov switching. First, we study the case where complete data is available; i.e. when we observe the Markov switching regime. Then we estimate the regression function in each regime using a Nadaraya-Watson type estimator. Second, we introduce a nonparametric recursive algorithm in the case of hidden Markov switching regime. Our algorithm restores the missing data by means of a Monte-Carlo step and estimate the regression function via a Robbins-Monro step. Consistency of the estimators are proved in both cases. F…
This paper deals with the nonparametric density estimation of the regression error term assuming its independence with the covariate. The difference between the feasible estimator which uses the estimated residuals and the unfeasible one using the true residuals is studied. An optimal choice of the bandwidth used to estimate the residuals is given. We also study the asymptotic normality of the feasible kernel estimator and its rate-optimality.
For the problem of nonparametric estimation of signal in Gaussian noise we point out the strong asymptotically minimax estimators on maxisets for linear estimators (see \cite{ker93,rio}). It turns out that the order of rates of convergence of Pinsker estimator on this maxisets is worse than the order of rates of convergence for the class of linear estimators considered on this maxisets. We show that balls in Sobolev spaces are maxisets for Pinsker estimators.
We study a class of nonlinear nonparametric inverse problems. Specifically, we propose a nonparametric estimator of the dynamics of a monotonically increasing trajectory defined on a finite time interval. Under suitable regularity conditions, we prove consistency of the proposed estimator and show that in terms of $L^2$-loss, the optimal rate of convergence for the proposed estimator is the same as that for the estimation of the derivative of a trajectory. This is a new contribution to the area of nonlinear nonparametric inverse problems. We conduct a simulation study to examine the finite sam…
We introduce and study a local linear nonparametric regression estimator for censorship model. The main goal of this paper is, to establish the uniform almost sure consistency result with rate over a compact set for the new estimate. To support our theoretical result, a simulation study has been done to make comparison with the classical regression estimator.
In this paper, we consider the robust adaptive non parametric estimation problem for the drift coefficient in diffusion processes. An adaptive model selection procedure, based on the improved weighted least square estimates, is proposed. Sharp oracle inequalities for the robust risk have been obtained.
The optimal rate of convergence of estimators of the integrated volatility, for a discontinuous Itô semimartingale sampled at regularly spaced times and over a fixed time interval, has been a long-standing problem, at least when the jumps are not summable. In this paper, we study this optimal rate, in the minimax sense and for appropriate "bounded" nonparametric classes of semimartingales. We show that, if the $r$th powers of the jumps are summable for some $r\in[0,2)$, the minimax rate is equal to $\min(\sqrt{n},(n\log n)^{(2-r)/2})$, where $n$ is the number of observations.
We discuss nonparametric estimators of the distribution of the incubation time of a disease. The classical approach in these models is to use parametric families like Weibull, log-normal or gamma in the estimation procedure. We analyze instead the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) and show that, under some conditions, its rate of convergence is cube root $n$ and that its limit behavior is given by Chernoff's distribution. We also study smooth estimates, based on the MLE. The density estimates, based on the MLE, are capable of catching finer or unexpected aspects of the density, …
We consider a multidimensional Ito semimartingale regularly sampled on [0,t] at high frequency $1/Δ_n$, with $Δ_n$ going to zero. The goal of this paper is to provide an estimator for the integral over [0,t] of a given function of the volatility matrix. To approximate the integral, we simply use a Riemann sum based on local estimators of the pointwise volatility. We show that although the accuracy of the pointwise estimation is at most $Δ_n^{1/4}$, this procedure reaches the parametric rate $Δ_n^{1/2}$, as it is usually the case in integrated functionals estimation. After a suitable bias corre…
We propose a nonparametric estimation for a class of fractional stochastic differential equations (FSDE) with random effects. We precisely consider general linear fractional stochastic differential equations with drift depending on random effects and non-random diffusion. We build ordinary kernel estimators and histogram estimators and study their Lp-risk (p =1 or 2), when H>1/2. Asymptotic results are evaluated as both T = T(N) and N tend to infinity.
In this paper we consider multivariate Hawkes processes with baseline hazard and kernel functions that depend on time. This defines a class of locally stationary processes. We discuss estimation of the time-dependent baseline hazard and kernel functions based on a localized criterion. Theory on stationary Hawkes processes is extended to develop asymptotic theory for the estimator in the locally stationary model.
A Bayesian nonparametric estimator to entropy is proposed. The derivation of the new estimator relies on using the Dirichlet process and adapting the well-known frequentist estimators of Vasicek (1976) and Ebrahimi, Pflughoeft and Soofi (1994). Several theoretical properties, such as consistency, of the proposed estimator are obtained. The quality of the proposed estimator has been investigated through several examples, in which it exhibits excellent performance.
Stochastic processes are often used to model complex scientific problems in fields ranging from biology and finance to engineering and physical science. This paper investigates rate-optimal estimation of the volatility matrix of a high-dimensional Itô process observed with measurement errors at discrete time points. The minimax rate of convergence is established for estimating sparse volatility matrices. By combining the multi-scale and threshold approaches we construct a volatility matrix estimator to achieve the optimal convergence rate. The minimax lower bound is derived by considering a su…
This paper considers hidden Markov models where the observations are given as the sum of a latent state which lies in a general state space and some independent noise with unknown distribution. It is shown that these fully nonparametric translation models are identifiable with respect to both the distribution of the latent variables and the distribution of the noise, under mostly a light tail assumption on the latent variables. Two nonparametric estimation methods are proposed and we prove that the corresponding estimators are consistent for the weak convergence topology. These results are ill…
In this article, we consider the estimation of the marginal distributions for pairs of data are recorded, with unobserved order in each pair. New estimators are proposed and their asymptotic properties are established, by proving a Glivenko-Cantelli theorem and a functional central limit result. Results from a simulation study are included and we illustrate the applicability of the method on the homologous chromosomes data.
We define a new bandwidth-dependent kernel density estimator that improves existing convergence rates for the bias, and preserves that of the variation, when the error is measured in $L_1$. No additional assumptions are imposed to the extant literature.
This paper presents a nonparametric method for estimating the conditional density associated to the jump rate of a piecewise-deterministic Markov process. In our framework, the estimation needs only one observation of the process within a long time interval. Our method relies on a generalization of Aalen's multiplicative intensity model. We prove the uniform consistency of our estimator, under some reasonable assumptions related to the primitive characteristics of the process. A simulation example illustrates the behavior of our estimator.
For nonparametric regression with one-sided errors and a boundary curve model for Poisson point processes we consider the problem of efficient estimation for linear functionals. The minimax optimal rate is obtained by an unbiased estimation method which nevertheless depends on a Hölder condition or monotonicity assumption for the underlying regression or boundary function. We first construct a simple blockwise estimator and then build up a nonparametric maximum-likelihood approach for exponential noise variables and the point process model. In that approach also non-asymptotic efficiency is ob…
In this paper we consider the nonparametric estimation of density and regression functions with non-negative support using a gamma kernel procedure introduced by Chen (2000). Strong uniform consistency and asymptotic normality of the corresponding estimators are established under a general ergodic assumption on the data generation process. Our results generalize those of Shi and Song (2016), obtained in the classic i.i.d. framework, and the works of Bouezmarni and Rombouts (2008, 2010b) and Gospodinov and Hirukawa (2007) for mixing time series.
We study the asymptotic normality of two feasible estimators of the integrated volatility of volatility based on the Fourier methodology, which does not require the pre-estimation of the spot volatility. We show that the bias-corrected estimator reaches the optimal rate $n^{1/4}$, while the estimator without bias-correction has a slower convergence rate and a smaller asymptotic variance. Additionally, we provide simulation results that support the theoretical asymptotic distribution of the rate-efficient estimator and show the accuracy of the latter in comparison with a rate-optimal estimator …
Kernel Estimation is one of the most widely used estimation methods in non-parametric Statistics, having a wide-range of applications, including spot volatility estimation of stochastic processes. The selection of bandwidth and kernel function is of great importance, especially for the finite sample settings commonly encountered in econometric applications. In the context of spot volatility estimation, most of the proposed selection methods are either largely heuristic or just formally stated without any feasible implementation. In this work, an objective method of bandwidth and kernel selecti…
This paper is concerned with the estimation of the volatility process in a stochastic volatility model of the following form: $dX_t=a_tdt+σ_tdW_t$, where $X$ denotes the log-price and $σ$ is a càdlàg semi-martingale. In the spirit of a series of recent works on the estimation of the cumulated volatility, we here focus on the instantaneous volatility for which we study estimators built as finite differences of the \textit{power variations} of the log-price. We provide central limit theorems with an optimal rate depending on the local behavior of $σ$. In particular, these theorems yield some con…
