Recent works by econo-physicists [5,8,15,19] have shown that the probability function of the share returns and the volatility satisfies a power law with an exponent close to 4. On the other hand, we investigated quantitatively the return and the volatility of the daily data of the Nikkei 225...

In this paper, we consider daily financial data from various sources (stock market indices, foreign exchange rates and bonds) and analyze their multiscaling properties by estimating the parameters of a Markov-switching multifractal (MSM) model with Lognormal volatility components. In order to...

Markov chains have experienced a surge of economic interest in the form of behavioral agent-based models that aim at explaining the statistical regularities of financial returns. We review some of the relevant mathematical facts and show how they apply to agent-based herding models, with the...