This paper develops a new systematic approach to implement approximate solutions to asset pricing models within multi-factor diffusion environments. For any model lacking a closed-form solution, we provide a solution obtained by expanding the analytically intractable model around a known...

A two-step estimation method of stochastic volatility models is proposed: In the first step, we estimate the (unobserved) instantaneous volatility process using the estimator of Kristensen (2010, Econometric Theory 26). In the second step, standard estimation methods for fully observed diffusion...

We develop novel methods for estimation and filtering of continuous-time models with stochastic volatility and jumps using so-called Approximate Bayesian Computation which build likelihoods based on limited information. The proposed estimators and filters are computationally attractive relative...