Date of Award

5-2016

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Economics and Finance

Committee Chair(s)

Tyler Brough

Committee

Tyler Brough

Committee

Devon Gorry

Committee

James Feigenbaum

Abstract

As a basic principle in statistics, a larger sample size is preferred whenever possible. Nonetheless, in the financial world, especially equities and currencies trading, including all available data poses great challenges due to the noise present in the volatility estimation. In his paper I examine the Two Time Scales Realized Volatility estimator by Zhang, Mykland, and Ait-Sahalia (2005b) and I find that it not only provides a more efficient estimator than a basic estimator of the integrated volatility of returns, but it also consistently estimates the microstructure noise present in the latent efficient return process. I find that by using this approach, it is possible to compare the efficiency of the prices of securities with lower transaction costs traded against those with higher transactions costs.

Included in

Economics Commons

Share

COinS