Approximate Bayesian Estimation of Stochastic Volatility in Mean Models using Hidden Markov Models: Empirical Evidence from Stock Latin American Markets

The stochastic volatility in mean (SVM) model proposed by Koopman and Uspensky (2002) is revisited. This paper has two goals. The first is to offer a methodology that requires less computational time in simulations and estimates compared with others proposed in the literature as in Abanto-Valle et al. (2021) and others. To achieve the first goal, we propose to approximate the likelihood function of the SVM model applying Hidden Markov Models (HMM) machinery to make possible Bayesian inference in real-time. We sample from the posterior distribution of parameters with a multivariate Normal distribution with mean and variance given by the posterior mode and the inverse of the Hessian matrix evaluated at this posterior mode using importance sampling (IS). The frequentist properties of estimators is anlyzed conducting a simulation study. The second goal is to provide empirical evidence estimating the SVM model using daily data for five Latin American stock markets. The results indicate that volatility negatively impacts returns, suggesting that the volatility feedback effect is stronger than the effect related to the expected volatility. This result is exact and opposite to the finding of Koopman and Uspensky (2002). We compare our methodology with the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) and Riemannian HMC methods based on Abanto-Valle et al. (2021). JEL Classification-JE: C11, C15, C22, C51, C52, C58, G12.