In economics, common factors are often assumed to underlie the co-movements of a set of macroeconomic variables. For this reason, many authors have used estimated factors in the construction of prediction models. In this paper, we begin by surveying the extant literature on diffusion indexes. We...

This paper derives the limiting distributions of alternative jackknife IV (JIV ) estimators and gives formulae for accompanying consistent standard errors in the presence of heteroskedasticity and many instruments. The asymptotic framework includes the many instrument sequence of Bekker (1994)...

The topic of volatility measurement and estimation is central to …nancial and more generally time series econo- metrics. In this paper, we begin by surveying models of volatility, both discrete and continuous, and then we summarize some selected empirical …ndings from the literature. In...

This paper proposes a testing procedure in order to distinguish between the case where the volatility of an asset price is a deterministic function of the price itself and the one where it is a function of one or more (possibly unobservable) factors, driven by not perfectly correlated Brownian...

This paper proposes a procedure to test for the correct specification of the functional form of the volatility process, within the class of eigenfunction stochastic volatility models (Meddahi, 2001). The procedure is based on the comparison of the moments of realized volatility measures with the...

This paper proposes a two-step procedure to back out the conditional alpha of a given stock using high-frequency data. We rst estimate the realized factor loadings of the stocks, and then retrieve their conditional alphas by estimating the conditional expectation of their risk- adjusted returns....

This paper introduces a no-arbitrage framework to assess how macroeconomic factors help explain the risk-premium agents require to bear the risk of fluctuations in stock market volatil- ity. We develop a model in which return volatility and volatility risk-premia are stochastic and derive...

How does stock market volatility relate to the business cycle? We develop, and estimate, a no-arbitrage model, and find that (i) the level and fluctuations of stock volatility are largely explained by business cycle factors and (ii) some unobserved factor contributes to nearly 20% to the overall...