Quantitative methods for financial markets

This unit covers statistics and econometric tools to assess the time series properties and distributional properties of financial series. It teaches how to model and estimate the single-factor and multiple-factor capital asset pricing models; and conduct diagnostic checks and reliable statistical inferences on various risk-return relationships and financial market hypotheses. It also introduces recent literature on modelling, estimating and forecasting financial markets' volatility; and parametric and nonparametric methods to estimate the value at risk and expected shortfall. Statistical software will be used to carry out financial data analysis and applied research projects.