Traditional econometric modelling typically follows the idea that market returns follow a normal distribution. However, the concept of tail risk indicates that the distribution of returns is not normal, but skewed and has heavy tails. Thus, a heavy-tailed distribution, which accurately estimates the tail risk, would significantly improve quantitative risk management practice. In this paper, we compare four widely used heavy-tailed distributions using the S&P 500 daily returns. Our results indicate that the Skewed t distribution in Hansen (1994) has the superior empirical performance compared with the Student's t distribution, the normal reciprocal inverse Gaussian distribution and the generalized hyperbolic distribution. We further showed the Skewed t distribution could generate the VaR estimates closest to the nonparametric historical VaR estimates compared with other heavy-tailed distributions.
We investigate the finite sample properties of the estimator of a persistence parameter of an unobservable common factor when the factor is estimated by the principal components method. When the number of cross-sectional observations is not sufficiently large, relative to the number of time series observations, the autoregressive coefficient estimator of a positively autocorrelated factor is biased downward and the bias becomes larger for a more persistent factor. Based on theoretical and simulation analyses, we show that bootstrap procedures are e¤ective in reducing the bias, and bootstrap confidence intervals outperform naive asymptotic confidence intervals in terms of the coverage probability.
We introduce a new type of heavy‐tailed distribution, the normal reciprocal inverse Gaussian distribution (NRIG), to the GARCH and Glosten‐Jagannathan‐Runkle (1993) GARCH models, and compare its empirical performance with two other popular types of heavy‐tailed distribution, the Student's t distribution and the normal inverse Gaussian distribution (NIG), using a variety of asset return series. Our results illustrate that there is no overwhelmingly dominant distribution in fitting the data under the GARCH framework, although the NRIG distribution performs slightly better than the other two types of distribution. For market indexes series, it is important to introduce both GJR‐terms and the NRIG distribution to improve the models’ performance, but it is ambiguous for individual stock prices series. Our results also show the GJR‐GARCH NRIG model has practical advantages in quantitative risk management. Finally, the convergence of numerical solutions in maximum‐likelihood estimation of GARCH and GJR‐GARCH models with the three types of heavy‐tailed distribution is investigated.
As one of the world's largest securities markets, the Hong Kong stock market plays a significant role in facilitating the development of Chinese economy. In this paper, we investigate a suite of widely-used models, the GARCH models in risk management of the Hong Kong stock market returns. To account for conditional volatilities, we consider a new type of fat-tailed distribution, the normal reciprocal inverse Gaussian distribution (NRIG), and compare its empirical performance with two other popular types of fat-tailed distribution, the Student's t distribution and the normal inverse Gaussian distribution (NIG). We show that the NRIG distribution performs slightly better than the other two types of distribution. Also, our results indicate that it is important to introduce both GJR-terms and the NRIG distribution to improve the models' performance. Our results illustrate that the asymmetric GARCH NRIG model has practical advantages in quantitative risk management, and serves as a very useful tool for industry participants.
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