In this paper we consider a nonlinear model based on neural networks as well as linear models to forecast the daily volatility of the S&P 500 and FTSE 100 indexes. As a proxy for daily volatility, we consider a consistent and unbiased estimator of the integrated volatility that is computed from...

In this paper we propose a smooth transition tree model for both the conditional mean and variance of the short-term interest rate process. The estimation of such models is addressed and the asymptotic properties of the quasi-maximum likelihood estimator are derived. Model specification is also...