This paper investigates the possibility to analyse the structure of unconditional or conditional (and possibly nonlinear) dependence in financial returns without requiring the specification of mean-variance models or a theoretical probability distribution. <abstract/>The main goal of the paper is to show...

Although nonlinearity is the rule in economic theory, nonlinearity tends to make life difficult for econometricians. While there have been many advances in nonlinear econometrics in recent years, some problems produced by nonlinearity remain 'skeletons in the closet' in empirical economic...