Heavy tails of OLS

Thomas Valentin Mikosch, Casper de Vries

5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Suppose the tails of the noise distribution in a regression exhibit power law behavior. Then the
distribution of the OLS regression estimator inherits this tail behavior. This is relevant for regressions involving financial data. We derive explicit finite sample expressions for the tail probabilities of the distribution of the OLS estimator. These are useful for inference. Simulations for medium
sized samples reveal considerable deviations of the coefficient estimates from their true values, in line with our theoretical formulas. The formulas provide a benchmark for judging the observed highly variable cross country estimates of the expectations coefficient in yield curve regressions.
Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Econometrics
Volume172
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)205-221
ISSN0304-4076
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2013

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