Estimation of stochastic volatility (SV) models is a formidable task because the presence of the latent variable makes the likelihood function difficult to construct. The model can be transformed to a linear state space with non-Gaussian disturbances. Durbin and Koopman (1997) have shown that the likelihood function of the general non-Gaussian state space model can be approximated arbitrarily accurately by decomposing it into a Gaussian part (constructed by the Kalman filter) and a remainder function (whose expectation is evaluated by simulation). This general methodology is specialised to the estimation of SV models. A finite sample simulation experiment illustrates that the resulting Monte Carlo likelihood estimator achieves full efficiency with minimal computational effort. Accurate values of the likelihood function allow inference within the model to be performed by means of likelihood ratio tests. This enables tests for the presence of a unit root in the volatility process to be constructed which are shown to be more powerful than the conventional unit root tests. The second part of the thesis consists of two empirical applications of the SV model. First, the informational content of implied volatility is examined. It is shown that the in- sample evolution of DEM/USD exchange rate volatility can be accurately captured by implied volatility of options. However, better forecasts of ex post volatility can be constructed from the basic SV model. This suggests that options implied volatility may not be market's best forecast of the future asset volatility, as is often assumed. Second, the regulatory claim of a destabilising effect of futures market trading on stock market volatility is critically assessed. It is shown how volume-volatility relationships can be accurately modelled in the SV framework. The variables which approximate the activity in the FT100 index futures market are found to have no influence on the volatility of the underlying stock market index.

This thesis presents five empirical papers investigating the issue of arbitrage trading of the FTSE 100 stock index futures. The first paper explores the effects of nonsynchronous trading on the spot index and develops a new technique as well as improving current methodologies for removing them. Studies in U. S. have shown that if the problem of non-synchronous trading is severe, the reported spot index is not reliable affecting the correct pricing of futures contracts. The second paper investigates the elasticity of supply of arbitrage in the futures market and the ability of the spot and the futures markets to respond to new information. It shows that arbitrage trading is initiated when spot prices largely drift apart from the futures prices. In addition, the futures prices tend to uncover new information before the spot prices, although this relationship is not stable over time. The analysis incorporates all possible channels of information to the -markets, which previous research fails to consider. The third paper analyses the behaviour of the deviation of the actual futures price from its theoretical value. Although this deviation is seen to have decreased its size over the years, it is still significant and persistent. Furthermore, it cannot be explained by the tax-timing option on pricing the futures or the effects of nonsynchronous trading. The fourth paper examines the presence, size and frequency of the profitability of the observed arbitrage opportunities by applying different transactions costs bounds to account for different classes of traders. After applying trading simulations arbitrage profitability is found to be frequent and significant, despite the fact that its size has decreased over the years. Finally, the thesis concludes with the fifth empirical paper which investigates the impact of futures trading on the spot and futures market volatility. It finds that arbitrage increases spot and futures price volatility but a volatile market brings the two markets closer on the whole, the thesis shows that although profitable arbitrage opportunities are not present in the long-run, they are not quickly removed in the short-run, allowing the spot and futures prices to drift apart.

MASTER THESIS MODELLING AND COMPARATIVE ANALYZES OF VOLATILITY SPILLOVER BETWEEN US, CZECH REPUBLIC AND SERBIAN STOCK MARKETS Abstract This paper estimates Serbian, Czech and US stock markets volatility. Few studies analyzed stock market linkages for these three markets. The mean equation is estimated using the vector auto- regression model. The second moments is further estimated using different multivariate GARCH models. We find that current conditional volatilities for each stock is highly affected by the past innovations. Cross-market correlations are significant as well. However, there is a higher conditional correlation between Czech and US stock market indices compared to the conditional correlation between Serbian and US stock indices.

x, 51 p. : ill. / New equity shares are sold for raising capital via a primary seasoned equity offering (SEO). In their 2010 article, Murray Carlson, Adlai Fisher, and Ron Giammarino discovered an intriguing relationship between market volatility and primary SEOs, namely that the volatility decreases before a primary SEO and increases thereafter. This pattern contradicts the real options theory of equity issuance for investment. In this study, I examine in greater detail whether the pre- and post-issue volatility dynamics are related to the probability of issuing new equity. I find little evidence that the decision to conduct a primary SEO depends on changes in market volatility after controlling for previously recognized determinants of SEOs. This reconciles the volatility finding of Carlson et al. with the real options theory of equity issuance for investment. I also examine secondary SEOs, in which only existing equity shares are sold and therefore no capital is raised by the firm. For secondary SEOs, real options theory makes no predictions about risk changes around the events. I find that market volatility tends to decline before a secondary SEO, a finding which warrants further attention. / Committee in charge: Dr. Roberto Gutierrez, Chair; Dr. Ekkehart Boehmer, Member; Dr. Wayne Mikkelson, Member; Dr. Jeremy Piger, Outside Member

In this thesis, we study the return and volatility spillovers between forex and stock markets in Scandinavian countries employing recently developed method- ology of spillover indices. Those measures are based on forecast error variance decomposition of generalized vector autoregressive (GVAR) model. This allows us to estimate both total and directional spillovers. Moreover, frequency connect- edness analysis is conducted by decomposing the spillover indices into frequency bands, corresponding to short-, medium- and long-run connectedness. We used daily data for major stock market indices and exchange rates of domestic cur- rency towards US dollar for Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Our data spans from February 2002 till July 2018 that covers turmoil periods of global fi- nancial crisis in 2007-2009, European sovereign debt crisis 2010-2013 and Brexit referendum in mid 2016. Our empirical analysis reveals that Norwegian financial markets do not contribute much to both return and volatility spillovers. On the other hand, euro and Danish FX market perform very similarly, by exhibiting the highest spillover contributions for both returns and volatility. Furthermore, distinct increasing trends in spillovers are revealed during the turmoil periods for most of the markets. From frequency...

Informed traders trade options on underlying securities to lower transaction costs and increase financial leverage for price trend and variance strategies. Options markets play a significant role in price discovery by incorporating private information about future prices for an underlying security into option prices. I generate a new model-free volatility measure to calculate the "distance from arbitrage bounds" from minute-by-minute option series for the S&P 500 index and 30 individual underlying stocks. These iron butterfly arbitrage bounds (IBBs) use intraday call and put option prices from the Bloomberg database. Narrow and wide IBBs are expected to reveal the options market valuation of volatility by market participants. Data series is gathered by using successive one-minute intervals from the Bloomberg database. The data comprise the most recent bid and ask option prices and volumes. I collect S&P 500 index values and index options and use 30 underlying stock prices and option prices for the contracts that have the largest option trading volume during the sampling interval. These bid and ask prices reflect the information generated by intraday price pressures implied by S&P 500 index options or stock options. Consistent with the option micro-structure literature, I find that the IBB measure for actively traded stock options attains its highest level immediately after the open of the market, declines steadily throughout the first trading hour and remains relatively stable until market close. However, index IBBs behave differently. S&P 500 index option IBB attains its lowest level during the first hour of the trading day, then increases and remains relatively stable until market close. I present new evidence regarding the dynamic relation between stock returns and innovations in expected volatility by using the minute-by-minute change in implied volatility (IV) as a proxy. Unlike the relationship between individual stock returns and their respective changes in implied idiosyncratic volatility, I find that all the coefficients on the market volatility index (VIX) term are negative and significant. Therefore, the evidence supports the explanation that the negative relationship between stock returns and expected volatility innovations is primarily related to the systematic component of the expected volatility. I also test whether narrow and wide IBB values capture incremental information to explain the return-volatility relationship. Results indicate that neither narrow IBB nor wide IBB values provide additional information beyond that provided by VIX and IV. The results are robust to five-minute and ten-minute sampling frequencies.

In the first chapter, I analyze the question that whether the elasticity of intertemporal substitution or risk aversion is more important determinant of precautionary savings. This is an important question since a significant fraction of the capital accumulation is due to precautionary savings according to studies. Thus, knowing the important determinant of precautionary savings will be helpful to understand the capital accumulation mechanism. I look into the effects of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution and risk aversion on precautionary savings separately by performing simulations in order to obtain numerical results. I find that the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is more important determinant than risk aversion. In the second chapter, I study the impact of the introduction of futures trading on the volatility of the underlying spot market for Turkish Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE).The economic literature intensified the debate on the negative or positive impact of futures trading on the stock market volatility. Although there are empirical studies for different countries with mixed results, most of them focus on developed countries. There are a few empirical researches on emerging markets. Analyzing the data, following results are obtained for ISE. First, the results suggest that the introduction of futures trading has decreased the volatility of ISE. Second, the results show that futures trading increases the speed at which information is impounded into spot market prices. Third, the asymmetric responses of volatility to the arrival of news for ISE have increased after the introduction of futures trading. In the third chapter, I investigate the presence of calendar anomalies in ISE by using GARCH models. The presence of calendar anomalies and their persistence presence since their first discovery still remains a puzzle to be solved. On the other hand, there are some claims that general anomalies are much less pronounced after they became known to the public. Most of the studies have examined the developed financial markets. However, it is important to test the calendar effects in data sets that are different from those in which they are originally discovered and so ISE is a good case to test the calendar effects for a developing country. / text

<p>The purpose of this study is to examine what affects the changes in credit spreads. A</p><p>regression model was performed where the explanatory variables were; volatility,</p><p>SP&500 index, interest-rate level the slope of yield curve and the dependent</p><p>variable was credit spread for each of CSUSDA, CSUSDBBB, and CSUSDB. We</p><p>found a positive correlation between these independent variables (Volatility, S&P</p><p>500index) and a negative correlation between interest-rate level and credit spreads.</p><p>These results were consistent with our hypothesis. However, the link between the</p><p>slope of yield curve and credit spreads was positive and that was inconsistent with</p><p>our hypothesis and some previous studies. The conclusion of this paper was a</p><p>change in credit spread is related to the variables that we used in our model. And</p><p>these variables explained about 50 per cent of this change.</p>

相對於資本市場對於一國之經濟，外匯市場已日趨重要。在過去，已有許多研究，從總經面來觀察匯率的波動，筆者試著跳脫總經面而從投資者對風險的承受度角度去看外匯匯率的波動。因為在實務上，我們發現一個有趣的現象，就是當匯率波動度變大時，資產價格往往是下跌的。也就是當市場匯率波動度升高時，投資者傾向於保守，只尋求報酬較低但相對較安全之標的物。本研究從亞洲13個幣別分別對匯市、股市、利率、商品與信用等市場的風險波動度來做分析，以期能達到協助匯率預測的目標。本研究主要以14個風險變數來做分析，假設每個變數與匯率波動度之間存在的正負關係，最後再以迴歸係數是否顯著，來驗證我們的假設是否成立。 文中之資料除新興市場債券指數來自JP Morgan銀行外，其餘皆取自路透社及彭博社之歷史資料庫。 本研究發現，可以綜合出三點:(一)在亞洲貨幣中，投資人認為澳洲幣與紐西蘭幣相對於美元，是屬於高風險資產。(二)其它的亞洲貨幣，呈現相反的態勢，投資人普遍認為本國貨幣相對美元是安全性資產，當風險貼水增加時，投資人傾向持有本國貨幣。這種情形尤以台灣和日本為甚。(三) 本文一共蒐集五種波動度來衡量投資人心中風險貼水的變化，實證發現以美國S&P 500的波動度指數標VIX最具全面性的效果。 / To a nation’s economy, foreign exchange market has gained its importance over time in comparison to the capital market. There are already many studies that look at foreign exchange rate movement from a macroeconomic standpoint in the past. The author here is trying to leave macroeconomic behind and look at foreign exchange rate movement from investors’ risk aversion level point of view. The interesting phenomenon we found in the realistic setting is that when exchange rate volatility increases, the asset price usually decreases. In another word, when market exchange rate volatility increases, investors tend to be more conservative and seek investment targets with lower risks and lower returns. This study analyzes 13 Asian currencies in relation to the volatility of foreign exchange market, stock market, interest rate, commodity market and credit market in hope to be able to forecast foreign exchange rates. This study uses 14 risk variables for its analysis. We assume each risk variable has a positive or negative relationship with foreign exchange rate volatility then we run multiple regression analysis to check the relevance of each variable and to validate our assumptions. All data came from Reuters and Bloomberg historic database, with the exception of Developing Market Bond Index which was obtained from JP Morgan Bank. The result of this study can be summarized as 3 findings: 1. Investors believe that when comparing with USD dollar, AUD and NZD are the risk assets. 2. Except AUD and NZD, investors think rest of the Asia currencies are risk assets. When risk premium increasing; the investors would like to have local currencies instead of USD. 3. The study uses 5 different volatilities from different markets to test the risk appetite from investors. It turns out the US stock market VIX index has most obviously link with Asia Currency.

In this thesis, we aim to find the effect of economic crisis announcements arising from the US subprime mortgage crisis and European sovereign debt crisis on the market volatility in theBRIC countries. We implement a GARCH model in order to compare the effect of individual news announcements and find that the US crisis had a bigger impact on BRIC market volatility than the European crisis. Of particular note, we find the US bailout had a higher impact than the failure of Lehman Brothers or any European crisis dates that were considered. We then examine the volatility transmission mechanism by implementing a VAR model to create a spillover index. Following, we apply a rolling window approach, creating spillover plots which show that both return and volatility spillovers are affected by crisis announcements. The importance of our results are related to investor decision making, particularly the relationship between market return and risk in developing country markets. Far to our knowledge, no recent literature has compared the two crises in the way we have nor with the datasets we have used.