IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/8504.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Telling from Discrete Data Whether the Underlying Continuous-Time Model is a Diffusion

Author

Listed:
  • Yacine Ait-Sahalia

Abstract

Asset returns have traditionally been modeled in the literature as following continuous-time Markov processes, and in many cases diffusions. Can discretely sampled financial rate data help us decide which continuous-time models are sensible? Diffusion processes are characterized by the continuity of their sample paths. This cannot be verified from the discrete sample path: by nature, even if the underlying sample path were continuous, the discretely sampled data will always appear as a sequence of discrete jumps. Instead, this paper relies on a characterization of the transition density of the discrete data to determine whether the discontinuities observed in the discrete data are the result of the discreteness of sampling, or rather evidence of genuine jump dynamics for the underlying continuous-time process. I then focus on the implications of this approach for option pricing models.

Suggested Citation

  • Yacine Ait-Sahalia, 2001. "Telling from Discrete Data Whether the Underlying Continuous-Time Model is a Diffusion," NBER Working Papers 8504, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8504
    Note: AP
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8504.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dilip B. Madan & Peter P. Carr & Eric C. Chang, 1998. "The Variance Gamma Process and Option Pricing," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 2(1), pages 79-105.
    2. John C. Cox & Jonathan E. Ingersoll Jr. & Stephen A. Ross, 2005. "A Theory Of The Term Structure Of Interest Rates," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 5, pages 129-164, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine, 1996. "Nonparametric Pricing of Interest Rate Derivative Securities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(3), pages 527-560, May.
    4. Vasicek, Oldrich, 1977. "An equilibrium characterization of the term structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 177-188, November.
    5. Breeden, Douglas T & Litzenberger, Robert H, 1978. "Prices of State-contingent Claims Implicit in Option Prices," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(4), pages 621-651, October.
    6. Ahn, Chang Mo & Thompson, Howard E, 1988. " Jump-Diffusion Processes and the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(1), pages 155-174, March.
    7. Merton, Robert C., 1976. "Option pricing when underlying stock returns are discontinuous," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1-2), pages 125-144.
    8. Mark Rubinstein., 1994. "Implied Binomial Trees," Research Program in Finance Working Papers RPF-232, University of California at Berkeley.
    9. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine, 1996. "Testing Continuous-Time Models of the Spot Interest Rate," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 9(2), pages 385-426.
    10. Bates, David S, 1991. "The Crash of '87: Was It Expected? The Evidence from Options Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(3), pages 1009-1044, July.
    11. Yacine Aït-Sahalia, 2001. "Transition Densities For Interest Rate And Other Nonlinear Diffusions," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Marco Avellaneda (ed.), Quantitative Analysis In Financial Markets Collected Papers of the New York University Mathematical Finance Seminar(Volume II), chapter 1, pages 1-34, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    12. Darrell Duffie & Jun Pan & Kenneth Singleton, 2000. "Transform Analysis and Asset Pricing for Affine Jump-Diffusions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(6), pages 1343-1376, November.
    13. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine & Wang, Yubo & Yared, Francis, 2001. "Do option markets correctly price the probabilities of movement of the underlying asset?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 67-110, May.
    14. Robert JARROW & Andrew RUDD, 2008. "Approximate Option Valuation For Arbitrary Stochastic Processes," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Financial Derivatives Pricing Selected Works of Robert Jarrow, chapter 1, pages 9-31, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    15. Rubinstein, Mark, 1994. "Implied Binomial Trees," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(3), pages 771-818, July.
    16. Banz, Rolf W & Miller, Merton H, 1978. "Prices for State-contingent Claims: Some Estimates and Applications," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(4), pages 653-672, October.
    17. Florens, Jean-Pierre & Renault, Eric & Touzi, Nizar, 1998. "Testing For Embeddability By Stationary Reversible Continuous-Time Markov Processes," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(6), pages 744-769, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Woerner Jeannette H. C., 2003. "Variational sums and power variation: a unifying approach to model selection and estimation in semimartingale models," Statistics & Risk Modeling, De Gruyter, vol. 21(1/2003), pages 47-68, January.
    2. Posch, Olaf, 2009. "Structural estimation of jump-diffusion processes in macroeconomics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 153(2), pages 196-210, December.
    3. Jose E. Figueroa-Lopez & Martin Forde, 2011. "The small-maturity smile for exponential Levy models," Papers 1105.3180, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2011.
    4. Alexandre Ziegler, 2007. "Why Does Implied Risk Aversion Smile?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(3), pages 859-904.
    5. Chen, Bin & Song, Zhaogang, 2013. "Testing whether the underlying continuous-time process follows a diffusion: An infinitesimal operator-based approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 173(1), pages 83-107.
    6. Torben G. Andersen & Tim Bollerslev & Francis X. Diebold, 2003. "Some Like it Smooth, and Some Like it Rough: Untangling Continuous and Jump Components in Measuring, Modeling, and Forecasting Asset Return Volatility," PIER Working Paper Archive 03-025, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Sep 2003.
    7. Lim, G.C. & Martin, G.M. & Martin, V.L., 2006. "Pricing currency options in the presence of time-varying volatility and non-normalities," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 291-314, July.
    8. Antonio Di Cesare, 2004. "Estimating expectations of shocks using option prices," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 506, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    9. repec:wyi:journl:002108 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Lee, Suzanne S. & Hannig, Jan, 2010. "Detecting jumps from Lévy jump diffusion processes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 271-290, May.
    11. Torben G. Andersen & Tim Bollerslev & Francis X. Diebold, 2007. "Roughing It Up: Including Jump Components in the Measurement, Modeling, and Forecasting of Return Volatility," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(4), pages 701-720, November.
    12. George Jiang & Ingrid Lo & Adrien Verdelhan, 2008. "Information Shocks, Jumps, and Price Discovery -- Evidence from the U.S. Treasury Market," Staff Working Papers 08-22, Bank of Canada.
    13. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine, 2004. "Disentangling diffusion from jumps," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 487-528, December.
    14. Alexandre Ziegler, 2002. "Why does Implied Risk Aversion Smile?," FAME Research Paper Series rp47, International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering.
    15. Lena Cleanthous & Pany Karamanou, 2011. "The ECB Monetary Policy and the Current Financial Crisis," Working Papers 2011-1, Central Bank of Cyprus.
    16. Groh, Alexander P., 2004. "Risikoadjustierte Performance von Private Equity-Investitionen," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 21382, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    17. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    18. Chen, Gongmeng & Choi, Yoon K. & Zhou, Yong, 2008. "Detections of changes in return by a wavelet smoother with conditional heteroscedastic volatility," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 143(2), pages 227-262, April.
    19. Zongwu Cai & Yongmiao Hong, 2013. "Some Recent Developments in Nonparametric Finance," Working Papers 2013-10-14, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University.
    20. René Garcia & Eric Ghysels & Eric Renault, 2004. "The Econometrics of Option Pricing," CIRANO Working Papers 2004s-04, CIRANO.
    21. Jing, Bing-Yi & Kong, Xin-Bing & Liu, Zhi & Mykland, Per, 2012. "On the jump activity index for semimartingales," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 166(2), pages 213-223.
    22. Sergei Levendorskii, 2004. "The American put and European options near expiry, under Levy processes," Papers cond-mat/0404103, arXiv.org.
    23. Björn Brügemann, 2012. "Does Employment Protection Create Its Own Political Support?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 369-416, April.
    24. repec:wyi:journl:002150 is not listed on IDEAS
    25. Duffie, Darrell, 2003. "Intertemporal asset pricing theory," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 11, pages 639-742, Elsevier.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:wyi:journl:002108 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Zongwu Cai & Yongmiao Hong, 2013. "Some Recent Developments in Nonparametric Finance," Working Papers 2013-10-14, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University.
    3. Cai, Zongwu & Hong, Yongmiao, 2003. "Nonparametric Methods in Continuous-Time Finance: A Selective Review," SFB 373 Discussion Papers 2003,15, Humboldt University of Berlin, Interdisciplinary Research Project 373: Quantification and Simulation of Economic Processes.
    4. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    5. Christoffersen, Peter & Jacobs, Kris & Chang, Bo Young, 2013. "Forecasting with Option-Implied Information," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 581-656, Elsevier.
    6. Joe Akira Yoshino, 2003. "Market Risk and Volatility in the Brazilian Stock Market," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 6, pages 385-403, November.
    7. Chen, Gongmeng & Choi, Yoon K. & Zhou, Yong, 2008. "Detections of changes in return by a wavelet smoother with conditional heteroscedastic volatility," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 143(2), pages 227-262, April.
    8. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine & Wang, Yubo & Yared, Francis, 2001. "Do option markets correctly price the probabilities of movement of the underlying asset?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 67-110, May.
    9. Das, Sanjiv Ranjan, 1998. "A direct discrete-time approach to Poisson-Gaussian bond option pricing in the Heath-Jarrow-Morton model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 333-369, November.
    10. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine & Lo, Andrew W., 2000. "Nonparametric risk management and implied risk aversion," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 9-51.
    11. Jin Zhang & Yi Xiang, 2008. "The implied volatility smirk," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(3), pages 263-284.
    12. Torben G. Andersen & Luca Benzoni & Jesper Lund, 2002. "An Empirical Investigation of Continuous‐Time Equity Return Models," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(3), pages 1239-1284, June.
    13. Egorov, Alexei V. & Li, Haitao & Xu, Yuewu, 2003. "Maximum likelihood estimation of time-inhomogeneous diffusions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 107-139, May.
    14. Mark Broadie & Jerome B. Detemple, 2004. "ANNIVERSARY ARTICLE: Option Pricing: Valuation Models and Applications," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(9), pages 1145-1177, September.
    15. Chen, Bin & Song, Zhaogang, 2013. "Testing whether the underlying continuous-time process follows a diffusion: An infinitesimal operator-based approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 173(1), pages 83-107.
    16. Antonio Mele, 2003. "Fundamental Properties of Bond Prices in Models of the Short-Term Rate," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(3), pages 679-716, July.
    17. Jianqing Fan, 2004. "A selective overview of nonparametric methods in financial econometrics," Papers math/0411034, arXiv.org.
    18. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine & Duarte, Jefferson, 2003. "Nonparametric option pricing under shape restrictions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1-2), pages 9-47.
    19. Li, Minqiang, 2008. "Price Deviations of S&P 500 Index Options from the Black-Scholes Formula Follow a Simple Pattern," MPRA Paper 11530, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Duffie, Darrell, 2003. "Intertemporal asset pricing theory," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 11, pages 639-742, Elsevier.
    21. Jondeau, Eric & Rockinger, Michael, 2000. "Reading the smile: the message conveyed by methods which infer risk neutral densities," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 885-915, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8504. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.