Volatility Forecast Comparison using Imperfect Volatility Proxies

Andrew Patton

No 175, Research Paper Series from Quantitative Finance Research Centre, University of Technology, Sydney

Abstract: The use of a conditionally unbiased, but imperfect, volatility proxy can lead to undesirable outcomes in standard methods for comparing conditional variance forecasts. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions on functional form of the loss function for the ranking of competing volatility forecasts to be robust to the presence of noise in the volatility proxy, and derive some interesting special cases of this class of “robust” loss functions. We motivate the theory with analytical results on the distortions caused by some widely-used loss functions, when used with standard volatility proxies such as squared returns, the intra-daily range or realised volatility. The methods are illustrated with an application to the volatility of returns on IBM over the period 1993 to 2003.

Keywords: forecast evaluation; forecast comparison; loss functions; realised Variance; range (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C22 C52 C53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2006-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm, nep-ets and nep-for
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (78)

Published as: Patton, A., 2011, "Volatility Forecast Comparison using Imperfect Volatility Proxies", Journal of Econometrics, 160(1), 246-256.

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https://www.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/qfr-archive-02/QFR-rp175.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Volatility forecast comparison using imperfect volatility proxies (2011)
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