Detecting and Measuring Nonlinearity

This paper proposes an approach to measure the extent of nonlinearity of the exposure of a financial asset to a given risk factor. The proposed measure exploits the decomposition of a conditional expectation into its linear and nonlinear components. We illustrate the method with the measurement of t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Rachidi Kotchoni
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2018-08-01
Series:Econometrics
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.mdpi.com/2225-1146/6/3/37
Description
Summary:This paper proposes an approach to measure the extent of nonlinearity of the exposure of a financial asset to a given risk factor. The proposed measure exploits the decomposition of a conditional expectation into its linear and nonlinear components. We illustrate the method with the measurement of the degree of nonlinearity of a European style option with respect to the underlying asset. Next, we use the method to identify the empirical patterns of the return-risk trade-off on the SP500. The results are strongly supportive of a nonlinear relationship between expected return and expected volatility. The data seem to be driven by two regimes: one regime with a positive return-risk trade-off and one with a negative trade-off.
ISSN:2225-1146