Nonparametric Bayesian Estimation of a Hölder Continuous Diffusion Coefficient
Braz. J. Probab. Stat., 34(3): 537–579. 2020.
46 Pages Posted: 27 Dec 2017 Last revised: 22 Jul 2020
Date Written: June 1, 2020
Abstract
We consider a nonparametric Bayesian approach to estimate the diffusion coefficient of a stochastic differential equation given discrete time observations over a fixed time interval. As a prior on the diffusion coefficient, we employ a histogram-type prior with piecewise constant realisations on bins forming a partition of the time interval. Specifically, these constants are realizations of independent inverse Gamma distributed randoma variables. We justify our approach by deriving the rate at which the corresponding posterior distribution asymptotically concentrates around the data-generating diffusion coefficient. This posterior contraction rate turns out to be optimal for estimation of a Hölder-continuous diffusion coefficient with smoothness parameter 0<λ≤1. Our approach is straightforward to implement, as the posterior distributions turn out to be inverse Gamma again, and leads to good practical results in a wide range of simulation examples. Finally, we apply our method on exchange rate data sets.
Keywords: Diffusion Coefficient, Gaussian Likelihood, Non-Parametric Bayesian Estimation, Pseudo-likelihood, Posterior Contraction Rate, Stochastic Differential Equation, Volatility
JEL Classification: C11, C13, C14, C22
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