Statistics is considered to be a difficult science since it requires a variety of skills including handling of quantitative data, graphical insights as well as mathematical ability. Yet ever increasing special knowledge of statistics is demanded since data of increasing complexity and size need...

Based on daily VDAX data this paper analyzes the factors governing the movements of implied volatilities of options on the German stock index DAX. Using Principal Components Analysis over the sample period from 1996 to 1997, we derive common factors representing shift and curvature of the term...

By extending the GARCH option pricing model of Duan (1995) to more flexible volatility estimation it is shown that the prices of out-of-the-money options strongly depend on volatility features such as asymmetry. Results are provided for the properties of the stationary pricing distribution in...

The Nadaraya-Watson estimator of regression is known to be highly sensitive to the presence of outliers in the sample. A possible way of robustication consists in using local L-estimates of regression. Whereas the local L-estimation is traditionally done using an empirical conditional...

We develop inference tools in a semiparametric regression model with missing response data. A semiparametric regression imputation estimator and an empirical likelihood based one for the mean of the response variable are defined. Both the estimators are proved to be asymptotically normal, with...