Many applications in finance use a non-linear transformation of the variance of returns. While the sample variance is an unbiased and consistent estimator of the population variance of returns, non-linear transformations of the sample variance will be consistent but biased. For estimates of...

Many applications in finance use a non-linear transformation of the variance of returns. While the sample variance is an unbiased and consistent estimator of the population variance of returns, non-linear transformations of the sample variance will be consistent but biased. For estimates of...

A common approach to estimating the conditional volatility of short horizon asset returns is to use an exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) of squared past returns. The EWMA estimator is based on the maximum likelihood estimator of the variance of the normal distribution, and is thus...

The question of rules versus discretion has generated a great deal of debate in many areas of the social sciences. Recently, much of the discussion among academics and stakeholders about the assessment of research in UK higher education institutions has focused on the means that should be used...

Volatility models such as GARCH, although misspecified with respect to the data-generating process, may well generate volatility forecasts that are unconditionally unbiased. In other words, they generate variance forecasts that, on average, are equal to the integrated variance. However, many...