The analysis of diffusion processes in financial models is crucially dependent on the form of the drift and diffusion coefficient functions. A methodology is proposed for estimating and testing coefficient functions for ergodic diffusions that are not directly observable. It is based on...

Although stock splits seem to be a purely cosmetic event, there exists ample empirical evidence from the United States that stock splits are associated with abnormal returns on both the announcement and the execution day, and additionally with an increase in variance following the ex-day. This...

Based on daily VDAX data this paper analyzes the factors governing the movements of implied volatilities of options on the German stock index DAX. Using Principal Components Analysis over the sample period from 1996 to 1997, we derive common factors representing "shift" and "curvature" of the...

We reexamine the expectations theory of the term structure focusing on the question how monetary policy actions indicated by changes in the very short rate affect long-term interest rates. Our main point is that the expectations hypothesis implies that very long rates should only react to...

This paper presents an analysis of tax clientele effects in the German government bond market from the viewpoint of private investors. The methods developed here allow the identification of bonds that are over-valued from the viewpoint of a certain tax class, the estimation of tax-specific term...

Stochastic Volatility (SV) models are widely used in financial applications. To decide whether standard parametric restrictions are justified for a given dataset, a statistical test is required. In this paper, we develop such a test based on the linear state space representation. We provide a...