Time variation in the tail behaviour of bunds futures returns

Christian Upper and Thomas Werner

No 199, Working Paper Series from European Central Bank

Abstract: The present paper focuses on three questions: (i) Are heavy tails a relevant feature of the distribution of BUND futures returns? (ii) Is the tail behaviour constant over time? (iii) If it is not, can we use the tail index as an indicator for financial market risk and does it add value in addition to classical indicators? The answers to these questions are (i) yes, (ii) no, and (iii) yes. The tail index is on average around 3, implying the nonexistence of the fourth moments. A recently developed test for changes in the tail behaviour indicated several breaks in the degree of heaviness of the return tails. Interestingly, the tails of the return distribution do not move in parallel to realised volatility. This suggests that the tails of futures returns contain information for risk management that complements that gained from more standard statistical measures. JEL Classification: C14, G13

Keywords: Extreme value theory; futures returns; risk management; Tail index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-12
Note: 336092
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ecb.europa.eu//pub/pdf/scpwps/ecbwp199.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:2002199

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from European Central Bank 60640 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Official Publications ().