The volatility component models have received much attention recently, not only because of their ability to capture complex dynamics via a parsimonious parameter structure, but also because it is believed that they can handle well structural breaks or non-stationarities in asset price...

In this paper, we develop a new nonparametric approach for estimating the risk-neutral density of asset price and reformulate its estimation into a double-constrained optimization problem. We implement our approach in R and evaluate it using the S&P 500 market option prices from 1996 to 2015. A...

This paper deals with the estimation of the risk-return trade-off. We use a MIDAS model for the conditional variance and allow for possible switches in the risk-return relation through a Markov-switching specification. We find strong evidence for regime changes in the risk-return relation. This...