Traditional models in finance rely heavily on the use of normal (Gaussian) distribution. Using examples of asset, factor and index returns, we illustrate that the assumption of normality does not capture the empirical properties of returns and volatility alone cannot be relied on as a measure of...

We propose a specification test for a wide range of parametric models for the conditional distribution function of an outcome variable given a vector of covariates. The test is based on the Cramer-von Mises distance between an unrestricted estimate of the joint distribution function of the data,...

Pearson's system of continuous probability distributions is used herein to analyze return distributions of the shares in all companies listed on the Italian stock exchange. Results show that when finite time periods are examined, the type IV distribution describes the behavior of almost all...

In the context of a continually changing and reforming financial market, stock market volatility plays a vital role in indicating macroeconomic environment changes, market participants' expectation and interaction mechanism. Market volatility research has been conducted by worldwide academics...

It is widely accepted that some of the most accurate predictions of aggregated asset returns are based on an appropriately specified GARCH process. As the forecast horizon is greater than the frequency of the GARCH model, such predictions either require time-consuming simulations or they can be...

This paper shows how uncertainty about the type of return distribution (distribution uncertainty) can be incorporated in asset allocation decisions by using a novel, Bayesian semiparametric approach. To evaluate the economic importance of distribution uncertainty, the extent of changes in...

A generalization of the hyperbolic secant distribution which allows both for skewness and for leptokurtosis was given by Morris (1982). Recently, Vaughan (2002) proposed another flexible generalization of the hyperbolic secant distribution which has a lot of nice properties but is not able to...