Students of introductory courses consider statistics as particularly difficult, as the understanding of the underlying concepts may require more time and energy than for other disciplines. For decades statisticians have tried to enhance understanding with the help of technical solutions such as...

The implied volatility of an option as a function of strike price and time to maturity forms a volatility surface. Traders price according to the dynamics of this high dimensional surface. Recent developments that employ semiparametric models approximate the implied volatility surface (IVS) in a...

Purpose: Interdependency among industries is vital for understanding economic structures and managing industrial portfolios. However, it is hard to precisely model the interconnecting structure among industries. One of the reasons is that the interdependencies show a different pattern in tail...

This paper describes a method for testing a parametric model of the mean of a random variable <italic>Y</italic> conditional on a vector of explanatory variables <italic>X</italic> against a semiparametric alternative. The test is motivated by a conditional moment test against a parametric alternative and amounts to replacing...

Several empirical studies reported that pricing kernels exhibit a common pattern across different markets. The main interest in pricing kernels lies in validating the presence of the peaks and their variability in location among curves. Motivated by this observation we investigate the problem of...

Decision making usually involves uncertainty and risk. Understanding which parts of the human brain are activated during decisions under risk and which neural processes underly (risky) investment decisions are important goals in neuroeconomics. Here, we analyze functional magnetic resonance...