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Dealing with uncertainty is at the heart of financial risk management and asset pricing. This cumulative dissertation consists of four independent research papers that study various aspects of uncertainty, from estimation and model risk over the volatility risk premium to the measurement of unobservable variables. In the first paper, a non-parametric estimator of conditional quantiles is proposed that builds on methods from the machine learning literature. The so-called leveraging estimator is discussed in detail and analyzed in an extensive simulation study. Subsequently, the estimator is used to quantify the estimation risk of Value-at-Risk and Expected Shortfall models. The results suggest that there are significant differences in the estimation risk of various GARCH-type models while in general estimation risk for the Expected Shortfall is higher than for the Value-at-Risk. In the second paper, the leveraging estimator is applied to realized and implied volatility estimates of US stock options to empirically test if the volatility risk premium is priced in the cross-section of option returns. A trading strategy that is long (short) in a portfolio with low (high) implied volatility conditional on the realized volatility yields average monthly returns that are economically and statistically significant. The third paper investigates the model risk of multivariate Value-at-Risk and Expected Shortfall models in a comprehensive empirical study on copula GARCH models. The paper finds that model risk is economically significant, especially high during periods of financial turmoil, and mainly due to the choice of the copula. In the fourth paper, the relation between digitalization and the market value of US insurers is analyzed. Therefore, a text-based measure of digitalization building on the Latent Dirichlet Allocation is proposed. It is shown that a rise in digitalization efforts is associated with an increase in market valuations.:1 Introduction 1.1 Motivation 1.2 Conditional quantile estimation via leveraging optimal quantization 1.3 Cross-section of option returns and the volatility risk premium 1.4 Marginals versus copulas: Which account for more model risk in multivariate risk forecasting? 1.5 Estimating the relation between digitalization and the market value of insurers 2 Conditional Quantile Estimation via Leveraging Optimal Quantization 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Optimal quantization 2.3 Conditional quantiles through leveraging optimal quantization 2.4 The hyperparameters N, λ, and γ 2.5 Simulation study 2.6 Empirical application 2.7 Conclusion 3 Cross-Section of Option Returns and the Volatility Risk Premium 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Capturing the volatility risk premium 3.3 Empirical study 3.4 Robustness checks 3.5 Conclusion 4 Marginals Versus Copulas: Which Account for More Model Risk in Multivariate Risk Forecasting? 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Market risk models and model risk 4.3 Data 4.4 Analysis of model risk 4.5 Model risk for models in the model confidence set 4.6 Model risk and backtesting 4.7 Conclusion 5 Estimating the Relation Between Digitalization and the Market Value of Insurers 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Measuring digitalization using LDA 5.3 Financial data & empirical strategy 5.4 Estimation results 5.5 Conclusion

La thèse se compose de deux parties : une partie consacrée à l'estimation des quantiles conditionnels et une autre à l'apprentissage supervisé. La partie "Estimation des quantiles conditionnels" est organisée en 3 chapitres : Le chapitre 1 est consacré à une introduction sur la régression linéaire locale, présentant les méthodes les plus utilisées, pour estimer le paramètre de lissage. Le chapitre 2 traite des méthodes existantes d’estimation nonparamétriques du quantile conditionnel ; Ces méthodes sont comparées, au moyen d’expériences numériques sur des données simulées et des données réelles. Le chapitre 3 est consacré à un nouvel estimateur du quantile conditionnel et que nous proposons ; Cet estimateur repose sur l'utilisation d'un noyau asymétrique en x. Sous certaines hypothèses, notre estimateur s'avère plus performant que les estimateurs usuels.<br> La partie "Apprentissage supervisé" est, elle aussi, composée de 3 chapitres : Le chapitre 4 est une introduction à l’apprentissage statistique et les notions de base utilisées, dans cette partie. Le chapitre 5 est une revue des méthodes conventionnelles de classification supervisée. Le chapitre 6 est consacré au transfert d'un modèle d'apprentissage semi-paramétrique. La performance de cette méthode est montrée par des expériences numériques sur des données morphométriques et des données de credit-scoring. / The thesis consists of two parts: One part is about the estimation of conditional quantiles and the other is about supervised learning. The "conditional quantile estimate" part is organized into 3 chapters. Chapter 1 is devoted to an introduction to the local linear regression and then goes on to present the methods, the most used in the literature to estimate the smoothing parameter. Chapter 2 addresses the nonparametric estimation methods of conditional quantile and then gives numerical experiments on simulated data and real data. Chapter 3 is devoted to a new conditional quantile estimator, we propose. This estimator is based on the use of asymmetrical kernels w.r.t. x. We show, under some hypothesis, that this new estimator is more efficient than the other estimators already used.<br> The "supervised learning" part is, too, with 3 chapters: Chapter 4 provides an introduction to statistical learning, remembering the basic concepts used in this part. Chapter 5 discusses the conventional methods of supervised classification. Chapter 6 is devoted to propose a method of transferring a semiparametric model. The performance of this method is shown by numerical experiments on morphometric data and credit-scoring data.

Dans cette thèse, nous étudions les propriétés asymptotiques de paramètres fonctionnels conditionnels en statistique non paramétrique, quand la variable explicative prend ses valeurs dans un espace de dimension infinie. Dans ce cadre non paramétrique, on considère les estimateurs des paramètres fonctionnels usuels, tels la loi conditionnelle, la densité de probabilité conditionnelle, ainsi que le quantile conditionnel. Le premier travail consiste à proposer un estimateur du quantile conditionnel et de prouver sa convergence uniforme sur un sous-ensemble compact. Afin de suivre la convention dans les études biomédicales, nous considérons une suite de v.a {Ti, i ≥ 1} identiquement distribuées, de densité f, censurée à droite par une suite aléatoire {Ci, i ≥ 1} supposée aussi indépendante, identiquement distribuée et indépendante de {Ti, i ≥ 1}. Notre étude porte sur des données fortement mélangeantes et X la covariable prend des valeurs dans un espace à dimension infinie.Le second travail consiste à établir la normalité asymptotique de l’estimateur à noyau du quantile conditionnel convenablement normalisé, pour des données fortement mélangeantes, et repose sur la probabilité de petites boules. Plusieurs applications à des cas particuliers ont été traitées. Enfin, nos résultats sont appliqués à des données simulées et montrent la qualité de notre estimateur. / In this thesis, we study some asymptotic properties of conditional functional parameters in nonparametric statistics setting, when the explanatory variable takes its values in infinite dimension space. In this nonparametric setting, we consider the estimators of the usual functional parameters, as the conditional law, the conditional probability density, the conditional quantile. We are essentially interested in the problem of forecasting in the nonparametric conditional models, when the data are functional random variables. Firstly, we propose an estimator of the conditional quantile and we establish its uniform strong convergence with rates over a compact subset. To follow the convention in biomedical studies, we consider an identically distributed sequence {Ti, i ≥ 1}, here density f, right censored by a random {Ci, i ≥ 1} also assumed independent identically distributed and independent of {Ti, i ≥ 1}. Our study focuses on dependent data and the covariate X takes values in an infinite space dimension. In a second step we establish the asymptotic normality of the kernel estimator of the conditional quantile, under α-mixing assumption and on the concentration properties on small balls of the probability measure of the functional regressors. Many applications in some particular cases have been also given.

This thesis proposes a new class of bivariate autoregressive conditional median duration models for matched high-frequency data and develops some inferential methods for an existing univariate model as well as the bivariate models introduced here to facilitate model fitting and forecasting. During the last two decades, the autoregressive conditional mean duration (ACD) model has been playing a dominant role in analyzing irregularly spaced high-frequency financial data. Univariate ACD models have been extensively discussed in the literature. However, some major challenges remain. The existing ACD models do not provide a good distributional fit to financial durations, which are right-skewed and often exhibit unimodal hazard rates. Birnbaum-Saunders (BS) distribution is capable of modeling a wide variety of positively skewed data. Median is not only a robust measure of central tendency, but also a natural scale parameter of the BS distribution. A class of conditional median duration models, the BS-ACD and the scale-mixture BS ACD models based on the BS, BS power-exponential and Student-t BS (BSt) distributions, have been suggested in the literature to improve the quality of the model fit. The BSt-ACD model is more flexible than the BS-ACD model in terms of kurtosis and skewness. In Chapter 2, we develop the maximum likelihood estimation method for the BSt-ACD model. The estimation is performed by utilizing a hybrid of optimization algorithms. The performance of the estimates is then examined through an extensive Monte Carlo simulation study. We also carry out model discrimination using both likelihood-based method and information-based criterion. Applications to real trade durations and comparison with existing alternatives are then made. The bivariate version of the ACD model has not received attention due to non-synchronicity. Although some bivariate generalizations of the ACD model have been introduced, they do not possess enough flexibility in modeling durations since they are conditional mean-based and do not account for non-monotonic hazard rates. Recently, the bivariate BS (BVBS) distribution has been developed with many desirable properties and characteristics. It allows for unimodal shapes of marginal hazard functions. In Chapter 3, upon using this bivariate BS distribution, we propose the BVBS-ACD model as a natural bivariate extension of the BS-ACD model. It enables us to jointly analyze matched duration series, and also capture the dependence between the two series. The maximum likelihood estimation of the model parameters and associated inferential methods have been developed. A Monte Carlo simulation study is then carried out to examine the performance of the proposed inferential methods. The goodness-of-fit and predictive performance of the model are also discussed. A real bivariate duration data analysis is provided to illustrate the developed methodology. The bivariate Student-t BS (BVBSt) distribution has been introduced in the literature as a robust extension of the BVBS distribution. It provides greater flexibility in terms of the kurtosis and skewness through the inclusion of an additional shape parameter. In Chapter 4, we propose the BVBSt-ACD model as a natural extension of the BSt-ACD model to the bivariate case. We then discuss the maximum likelihood estimation of the model parameters. A simulation study is carried out to investigate the performance of these estimators. Model discrimination is then done by using information-based criterion. Methods for evaluating the goodness-of-fit and predictive ability of the model are also discussed. A simulated data example is used to illustrate the proposed model as compared to the BVBS-ACD model. Finally, in Chapter 5, some concluding comments are made and also some problems for future research are mentioned. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

In dieser Arbeit untersuchen wir einige Möglichkeiten, financial und soziale Netzwerke zu analysieren, ein Thema, das in letzter Zeit in der ökonometrischen Literatur große Beachtung gefunden hat. Kapitel 2 untersucht den Risiko-Spillover-Effekt über das in White et al. (2015) eingeführte multivariate bedingtes autoregressives Value-at-Risk-Modell. Wir sind an der Anwendung auf nicht stationäre Zeitreihen interessiert und entwickeln einen sequentiellen statistischen Test, welcher das größte verfügbare Homogenitätsintervall auswählt. Unser Ansatz basiert auf der Changepoint-Teststatistik und wir verwenden einen neuartigen Multiplier Bootstrap Ansatz zur Bewertung der kritischen Werte. In Kapitel 3 konzentrieren wir uns auf soziale Netzwerke. Wir modellieren Interaktionen zwischen Benutzern durch ein Vektor-Autoregressivmodell, das Zhu et al. (2017) folgt. Um für die hohe Dimensionalität kontrollieren, betrachten wir ein Netzwerk, das einerseits von Influencers und Andererseits von Communities gesteuert wird, was uns hilft, den autoregressiven Operator selbst dann abzuschätzen, wenn die Anzahl der aktiven Parameter kleiner als die Stichprobegröße ist. Kapitel 4 befasst sich mit technischen Tools für die Schätzung des Kovarianzmatrix und Kreuzkovarianzmatrix. Wir entwickeln eine neue Version von der Hanson-Wright- Ungleichung für einen Zufallsvektor mit subgaußschen Komponenten. Ausgehend von unseren Ergebnissen zeigen wir eine Version der dimensionslosen Bernstein-Ungleichung, die für Zufallsmatrizen mit einer subexponentiellen Spektralnorm gilt. Wir wenden diese Ungleichung auf das Problem der Schätzung der Kovarianzmatrix mit fehlenden Beobachtungen an und beweisen eine verbesserte Version des früheren Ergebnisses von (Lounici 2014). / In this work we explore some ways of studying financial and social networks, a topic that has recently received tremendous amount of attention in the Econometric literature. Chapter 2 studies risk spillover effect via Multivariate Conditional Autoregressive Value at Risk model introduced in White et al. (2015). We are particularly interested in application to non-stationary time series and develop a sequential test procedure that chooses the largest available interval of homogeneity. Our approach is based on change point test statistics and we use a novel Multiplier Bootstrap approach for the evaluation of critical values. In Chapter 3 we aim at social networks. We model interactions between users through a vector autoregressive model, following Zhu et al. (2017). To cope with high dimensionality we consider a network that is driven by influencers on one side, and communities on the other, which helps us to estimate the autoregressive operator even when the number of active parameters is smaller than the sample size. Chapter 4 is devoted to technical tools related to covariance cross-covariance estimation. We derive uniform versions of the Hanson-Wright inequality for a random vector with independent subgaussian components. The core technique is based on the entropy method combined with truncations of both gradients of functions of interest and of the coordinates itself. We provide several applications of our techniques: we establish a version of the standard Hanson-Wright inequality, which is tighter in some regimes. Extending our results we show a version of the dimension-free matrix Bernstein inequality that holds for random matrices with a subexponential spectral norm. We apply the derived inequality to the problem of covariance estimation with missing observations and prove an improved high probability version of the recent result of Lounici (2014).