Qiwei Yao

Financial econometrics is an interdisciplinary subject that uses statistical methods and economic theory to address a variety of quantitative problems in finance. This compact, master's-level textbook focuses on methodology and includes real financial data illustrations throughout. The mathematical level is purposely kept moderate, allowing the power of the quantitative methods to be understood without too much technical detail. Wherever possible, the authors indicate where to find the relevant R codes to implement the various methods. This book grew out of a course at Princeton University which is one of the world's flagship programs in computational finance and financial engineering. It will therefore be useful for those with an economics and finance background who are looking to sharpen their quantitative skills, and also for those with strong quantitative skills who want to learn how to apply them to finance.

Amongmanyexcitingdevelopmentsinstatisticsoverthelasttwodecades, nonlineartimeseriesanddata-analyticnonparametricmethodshavegreatly advanced along seemingly unrelated paths. In spite of the fact that the - plication of nonparametric techniques in time series can be traced back to the 1940s at least, there still exists healthy and justi?ed skepticism about the capability of nonparametric methods in time series analysis. As - thusiastic explorers of the modern nonparametric toolkit, we feel obliged to assemble together in one place the newly developed relevant techniques. Theaimofthisbookistoadvocatethosemodernnonparametrictechniques that have proven useful for analyzing real time series data, and to provoke further research in both methodology and theory for nonparametric time series analysis. Modern computers and the information age bring us opportunities with challenges. Technological inventions have led to the explosion in data c- lection (e.g., daily grocery sales, stock market trading, microarray data). The Internet makes big data warehouses readily accessible. Although cl- sic parametric models, which postulate global structures for underlying systems, are still very useful, large data sets prompt the search for more re?nedstructures,whichleadstobetterunderstandingandapproximations of the real world. Beyond postulated parametric models, there are in?nite other possibilities. Nonparametric techniques provide useful exploratory tools for this venture, including the suggestion of new parametric models and the validation of existing ones.