Modeling conditional distributions in time series has attracted increasing attention in economics and finance. We develop a new class of generalized Cramer–von Mises (GCM) specification tests for time series conditional distribution models using a novel approach, which embeds the empirical...

We propose two nonparametric transition density-based speciþcation tests for continuous-time diffusion models. In contrast to marginal density as used in the literature, transition density can capture the full dynamics of a diffusion process, and in particular, can distinguish processes with...

Multivariate continuous-time models have been playing important roles in finance and economics. We develop an omnibus specification test for multivariate continuous-time models using the conditional characteristic function, which often has a convenient closed form or can be accurately...

We develop a nonparametric regression-based goodness-of-fit test for multifactor continuous-time Markov models using the conditional characteristic function, which often has a convenient closed-form or can be approximated accurately for many popular continuous-time Markov models in economics and...

We characterize the dynamics of the U.S. short-term interest rate using a Markov regime switching model. Using a test developed by Garcia (1998), we show that there are two regimes in the data: In one regime, the short rate behaves like a random walk with low volatility; in another regime, it...

The current large empirical literature on interest rate modeling typically focuses on the in-sample performance and ignores the out-of-sample performance of existing models. We fill the gap in this literature by providing probably the first comprehensive empirical study (to our knowledge) of the...

We propose two nonparametric specification tests for continuous-time models based on transition density, which unlike the marginal density used in the literature, can capture the full dynamics of a continuous-time process. To improve the finite sample performance of nonparametric methods, we...

Cramer's Large Deviation Theorem is used to formalize a modern time series variant of the quot;Safety-Firstquot;, loss aversion criterion, providing a behavioral foundation for a new portfolio performance index. When returns are normally distributed, the performance index is proportional to the...

Numerous studies have shown that the simple random walk model outperforms all structural and time series models in forecasting the conditional mean of exchange rate changes. However, in many important applications, such as risk management, forecasts of the probability distribution of exchange...

We propose two tests for the equality of covariance matrices between two high-dimensional populations. One test is on the whole variance-covariance matrices, and the other is on offdiagonal sub-matrices which define the covariance between two non-overlapping segments of the high-dimensional...