Abstract

In the econometric literature of high frequency data, it is often assumed that one can carry out inference conditionally on the underlying volatility processes. In other words, conditionally Gaussian systems are considered. This is often referred to as the assumption of “no leverage effect”. This is often a reasonable thing to do, as general estimators and results can often be conjectured from considering the conditionally Gaussian case. The purpose of this paper is to try to give some more structure to the things one can do with the Gaussian assumption. We shall argue in the following that there is a whole treasure chest of tools that can be brought to bear on high frequency data problems in this case. We shall in particular consider approximations involving locally constant volatility processes, and develop a general theory for this approximation. As applications of the theory, we propose an improved estimator of quarticity, an ANOVA for processes with multiple regressors, and an estimator for error bars on the Hayashi-Yoshida estimator of quadratic covariation Some key words and phrases: consistency, cumulants, contiguity, continuity, discrete observation, efficiency, Itô process, likelihood inference, realized volatility, stable convergence

Citations