“Financial Risk Measurement for Financial Risk Management”

Current practice largely follows restrictive approaches to market risk measurement, such as historical simulation or RiskMetrics. In contrast, we propose flexible methods that exploit recent developments in fi nancial econometrics and are likely to produce more accurate risk assessments, treating both portfolio-level and asset-level analysis. Asset-level analysis is particularly challenging because the demands of real-world risk management in financial institutions—in particular, real-time risk tracking in very high-dimensional situations—impose strict limits on model complexity. Hence we stress powerful yet parsimonious models that are easily estimated. In addition, we emphasize the need for deeper understanding of the links between market risk and macroeconomic fundamentals, focusing primarily on links among equity return volatilities, real growth, and real growth volatilities. Throughout, we strive not only to deepen our scienti c understanding of market risk, but also cross-fertilize the academic and practitioner communities, promoting improved market risk measurement technologies that draw on the best of both.

Information

Paper Number: 11-037

Paper Year: 2011

Authors:

Torben Andersen
Tim Bollerslev
Peter Christoffersen
Francis Diebold