Financial Econometrics

Module Introduction and Overview

Contents
1 Introduction to the Module 2

2 The Module Authors 3

3 Study Resources 4

4 Module Overview 5

5 Learning Outcomes 9

6 R 10

References 15
1 Introduction to the Module
Welcome to the module on Financial Econometrics. The first objective of this
module is to introduce the main econometric methods and techniques used
in the analysis of issues related to finance. A module with the title Financial
Econometrics assumes that such a field exists. However, as this quote reveals,
this is far from true:
What is … financial econometrics? This simple question does not have a
simple answer. The boundary of such an interdisciplinary area is always
moot and any attempt to give a formal definition is unlikely to be
successful. Broadly speaking, financial econometrics [aims] to study
quantitative problems arising from finance. It uses statistical techniques
and economic theory to address a variety of problems from finance.
These include building financial models, estimation and inferences of
financial models, volatility estimation, risk management, testing financial
economics theory, capital asset pricing, derivative pricing, portfolio
allocation, risk-adjusted returns, simulating financial systems, hedging
strategies, among others (Fan, 2004: 1).

In this module we define financial econometrics as ‘the application of

statistical techniques to problems in finance’. Although econometrics is often
associated with analysing economics problems such as economic growth,
consumption and investment, the applications in the areas of finance have
grown rapidly in the last few decades. Your key text by Chris Brooks,
Introductory Econometrics for Finance, lists the following examples:
1. Testing whether financial markets are weak-form informationally
efficient.
2. Testing whether the capital asset pricing model or arbitrage pricing
theory represent superior models for the determination of returns on
risky assets.
3. Measuring and forecasting the volatility of bond returns.
4. Explaining the determinants of bond credit ratings used by the ratings
agencies.
5. Modelling long-term relationships between prices and exchange rates.
6. Determining the optimal hedge ratio for a spot position in oil.
7. Testing technical trading rules to determine which makes the most
money.
8. Testing the hypothesis that earnings or dividend announcements have
no effect on stock prices.
9. Testing whether spot or futures markets react more rapidly to news.
10. Forecasting the correlation between the returns to the stock indices of
two countries.
The above list does not include all the possibilities, and you might think of
many other topics that could be added to the list.
 Specimen Examination

If financial econometrics is simply the application of econometrics to finance

issues, does this mean that econometric tools you have studied in previous
courses are the same as those used in this module? A simple answer to this
question is yes. Many of the concepts that you have encountered in your
other studies such as regression and hypothesis testing are highly relevant
for this module. In fact, all the topics introduced in this module will require
that you have a deep understanding of these concepts. However, the em-
phasis and the set of problems dealt with in finance issues are different from
the economic problems you have encountered in previous courses. To start
with, the nature of the data in finance issues is very different. Financial data
are observed at a much higher frequency (in some instances minute-by-
minute frequency). For macroeconomic data, we consider ourselves lucky if
we are able to observe data on a monthly basis. Furthermore, recorded
financial data such as stock market prices are those at which the transaction
took place. There is no possibility for measurement error. This is in contrast
to macroeconomic data, which are revised regularly.
Also the properties of financial series differ. For instance, the module
Econometric Analysis and Applications analyses whether a series has a unit
root, and devises methods to estimate models when the variables are inte-
grated of order one. In financial econometrics these issues are not a major
concern. Although we observe prices most of the time, financial economet-
rics mainly deals with asset or portfolio returns. Since returns are stationary,
most of the methods used in this module also apply to stationary series.
This may imply that models of financial returns are much easier to deal
with. However, this is not the case. The analysis of financial data brings its
own challenges. As you will see in Unit 1, financial returns possess some
common properties that need to be incorporated in econometric models. For
instance, returns of assets such as stocks and bonds exhibit time-varying
volatility. This requires introducing new models and estimation techniques
to model time varying volatility. Not only that, financial returns can exhibit
asymmetry in volatility, which requires further modification of existing
models. Furthermore, financial data are not normally distributed. As you
have seen in your previous studies, the assumption of normality has been
central for estimation and hypothesis testing. Unfortunately, even in finance
applications, existing econometric techniques still find it difficult to deal
with models that assume non-normal distribution.

2 The Module Authors

Bassam Fattouh graduated in Economics from the American University of
Beirut in 1995. Following this, he obtained his Masters degree and PhD from
the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 1999.
He is a Professor in Finance and Management and Academic Director for the
MSc in International Management for the Middle East and North Africa at
the Department for Financial and Management Studies, SOAS. He is also
currently Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Oil and Middle East
 Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies at the University of
Oxford. He has published in leading economic journals, including the
Journal of Development Economics, Economics Letters, Economic Inquiry, Macro-
economic Dynamics and Empirical Economics. His research interests are mainly
in the areas of finance and growth, capital structure and applied non-linear
econometric modelling, as well as oil pricing systems.
Jonathan Simms is a tutor for CeFiMS, and has taught at University of
Manchester, University of Durham and University of London. Dr Simms has
contributed to development of various CeFiMS modules including Econo-
metric Principles & Data Analysis; Econometric Analysis & Applications; Risk
Management: Principles & Applications; Financial Engineering; Introduction to
Valuation; Introduction to Law and to Finance; Public Financial Management:
Reporting and Audit; Corporate and Investment Banking; and Banking Strategy.

3 Study Resources
This module mainly uses one key text:
Chris Brooks (2019) Introductory Econometrics for Finance. 4th Edition.
Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
This text has been chosen because it is extremely clear, it contains a large
number of examples and covers a lot of different topics. It is a useful text
to refresh your memory of some basic concepts studied in previous cours-
es (especially Chapters 2, 3 and 4). The text has a very useful companion
website with rich resources for students including practice questions,
solutions to end of chapter questions, data in Excel files, and R codes. The
link for the companion resources can be found at:
https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/economics/finance/intro
ductory-econometrics-finance-4th-edition?format=PB
Although the text covers a lot of subject areas, in some units you may need
to rely more heavily on the study guide and suggested readings.
The units in the module will closely follow the presentation in the key text.
However, for some of the units, this is not feasible either because the chapter
does not cover the topic at all, or covers it in a superficial way. In such cases
you may find that the study guide is more demanding than the material
presented in the key text, because the study guide analyses the issues using
mathematics (though at a relatively basic level). This is necessary to gain a
deeper understanding of the issues being considered.
Throughout this module it is essential that you do all the readings and solve
all the exercises. In this module each idea builds on the previous ones in a
logical fashion, and it is important that each idea is clear to you before you
move on. You should therefore take special care not to fall behind with your
schedule of studies.
 Specimen Examination

 Software
R
This module will use R. This is a widely used programming environment for
data analysis and graphics. You will use this software to do the exercises in
the units. The results presented in the units are also from R.
R is free software, released under the GNU General Public License (R Core
Team, 2019). Instructions for downloading R, and a brief introduction on how
to use it, are provided below.
The best advice on using R is to stay focused on the subject that is being
studied in each unit, and to do the exercises for the unit; this will reinforce
your understanding and also develop your confidence in using data and R.
The units include all of the R commands that are required to complete the
examples and exercises. However, as you become more confident in using R,
or if you are already familiar with R, you may find that you develop your
own R commands.

4 Module Overview
Unit 1 Statistical Properties of Financial Returns
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Calculation of Asset Returns
1.3 Stylised Facts about Financial Returns
1.4 Distribution of Asset Returns
1.5 Time Dependency
1.6 Linear Dependency across Asset Returns

Unit 2 Matrix Algebra, Regression and Applications in Finance

2.1 Introduction
2.2 Matrix Algebra: Some Basic Concepts and Applications
2.3 OLS Regression Using Matrix Algebra
2.4 Applications to Finance

Unit 3 Maximum Likelihood Estimation

3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Maximum Likelihood Function: Some Basic Ideas and Examples
3.3 The Maximum Likelihood Method: Mathematical Derivation
3.4 The Information Matrix
3.5 Usefulness and Limitations of the Maximum Likelihood Estimator
3.6 Hypothesis Testing

Unit 4 Univariate Time Series and Applications to Finance

4.1 Introduction
4.2 The Lag Operator
4.3 Some Key Concepts
 4.4 Wold’s Decomposition Theory (Optional section)
4.5 Properties of AR Processes
4.6 Properties of Moving Average Processes
4.7 Autoregressive Moving Average (ARMA) Processes
4.8 The Box–Jenkins Approach
4.9 Example: A Model of Stock Returns
4.10 Conclusion

Unit 5 Modelling Volatility – Conditional Heteroscedastic Models

5.1 Introduction
5.2 ARCH Models
5.3 GARCH Models
5.4 Estimation of GARCH Models
5.5 Forecasting with GARCH Model
5.6 Asymmetric GARCH Models
5.7 The GARCH-in-Mean Model
5.8 Conclusion

Unit 6 Modelling Volatility and Correlations – Multivariate GARCH

Models
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Multivariate GARCH Models
6.3 The VECH Model
6.4 The Diagonal VECH Model
6.5 The BEKK Model
6.6 The Constant Correlation Model
6.7 The Dynamic Correlation Model
6.8 Estimation of a Multivariate Model

Unit 7 Vector Autoregressive Models

7.1 Introduction
7.2 Vector Autoregressive Models
7.3 Issues in VAR
7.4 Hypothesis Testing in VAR
7.5 Example: Money Supply, Inflation and Interest Rate

Unit 8 Limited Dependent Variable Models

8.1 Introduction
8.2 The Linear Probability Model
8.3 The Logit Model
8.4 The Probit Model
8.5 Estimation using Maximum Likelihood
8.6 Goodness of Fit Measures
8.7 Example: Dividends, Growth and Profits
8.8 Multinomial Linear Dependent Variables
8.9 Ordered Response Linear Dependent Variable Models (optional section)
The objective of the module is to extend your knowledge and equip you with
methods and techniques that allow you to analyse finance-related issues.
 Specimen Examination

This module starts by illustrating how to measure financial returns, the main
variable that we try to model in financial applications. There are various
definitions of returns, and Unit 1 illustrates how to compute the various
types of returns. After defining financial returns, Unit 1 presents some
stylised facts about the properties of financial returns. These include volatili-
ty clustering, asymmetric volatility and non-normality. Unit 1 then
introduces various measures of moments of the distribution of financial
returns, and how these can be computed for samples of financial returns. The
material covered in this unit sets the scene for the rest of the module and
thus it is important that you make yourself familiar with these concepts.
Unit 2 provides a brief introduction to the main principles of matrix alge-
bra. The modules Econometric Principles and Data Analysis and Econometric
Analysis and Applications develop the basic regression concepts and statisti-
cal tools without referring to matrix algebra. This is essential to develop
understanding of the basic concepts involved in regression analysis.
However, in most theoretical and practical applications the researcher often
deals with multivariate relations. As you will discover in this unit, the
simplest way to tackle these multivariate relations is to switch to matrix
notation. Matrix algebra eliminates the need to use summation signs and
subscripts and helps present the results in a simple way. In some of the
units of this module, it will be very difficult to present the proofs and
results without using matrix notation. Although matrix notation simplifies
the presentation of the results, the fact remains that you may be learning a
new language. Learning a new language can be exciting but it is also
challenging. To help you to understand and apply matrix algebra, we use
matrix algebra in some financial applications, namely the multi-factor
models and portfolio theory.
Unit 3 provides a brief review of the maximum likelihood estimation meth-
od. In your previous study of econometrics, it is probable that the least
squares (LS) method was used to derive the estimates of the model’s param-
eters and for hypothesis testing. Least squares is just one of many estimation
techniques available for econometricians. In Units 4, 5, 6 and 8 of this mod-
ule, you will encounter models such as GARCH, ARMA and binary choice
models that can’t be estimated by least squares. Instead, econometricians rely
on maximum likelihood estimation, which is a flexible technique, more
general than OLS and, under fairly general conditions, yields consistent and
efficient estimates of the parameters. However, like any estimation tech-
nique, maximum likelihood is based on a particular underlying philosophy
and principles. In Unit 3 you will be introduced to these principles and how
these can be applied to derive estimates of the parameters and test hypothe-
ses about the estimated parameters. This is one of the most challenging units,
but hopefully, by using various examples, you will be able to gain a deep
understanding of how the estimation method works, and you will be able to
identify its strengths and weaknesses.
Unit 4 presents univariate time series models. In these types of models, a
series is modelled in terms of its own past values and some disturbance terms
(also known as shocks). Univariate time series models were introduced in the
module Econometric Analysis and Applications. These models are different from
the structural models you have studied in other courses, in the sense that
these models are atheoretical – that is, they are not based on any underlying
theoretical frameworks but are data driven. These models are the first build-
ing blocks for estimating financial returns and help illustrate some of the key
properties of financial returns. The aim of this unit is to introduce these
models, such as the autoregressive model (AR), the moving average model
(MA), and a combination of these two (ARMA models).
Unit 5 presents some of the econometric methods used for modelling and
forecasting volatility of asset returns. Volatility models have attracted the
attention of academics and practitioners, and are widely used in many areas
of finance, including models of value-at-risk, option pricing, and portfolio
allocation. One of the stylised facts about asset returns is that the variance of
the error terms is not equal at every point in time, and hence the error terms
are said to suffer from heteroscedasticity. Thus, in modelling financial re-
turns, one should consider approaches that relax the assumption of
homoscedasticity. ARCH (autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic) and
GARCH (generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic) models do
exactly that. They relax the assumption of constant variance and exploit the
heteroscedasticity feature to model the variance of returns over time. As you
will study in this unit, GARCH models are also flexible enough to allow us to
incorporate asymmetry in the volatility of financial asset returns.
Unit 6 extends the GARCH model from the univariate to the multivariate
setting. This proves to be an important extension because it allows re-
searchers and financial analysts to model time-varying conditional
covariance and correlation between the returns of various financial assets.
This technique opens the way for many financial applications such as
dynamic asset pricing models, portfolio selection, dynamic hedging, value-
at-risk, and volatility transmission between assets and markets. Multivari-
ate GARCH models also help researchers to model some of the features of
asset returns, such as correlation clustering.
Unit 7 presents vector autoregressive (VAR) models, which can be thought
of as generalisations to the univariate time series models. VAR models
represent an improvement over univariate time series models because they
allow variables to be modelled not only in terms of their own lags and their
own shocks, but also in terms of the lags of other variables. This provides
greater flexibility and allows us to examine the dynamic interactions be-
tween a set of variables. VAR models have become very popular in the
econometrics literature and are widely used in the areas of macroeconomics
and finance. The tools which have developed around VAR, such as impulse
response analysis, Granger causality and variance decompositions (all
discussed in this unit) have become central to understanding the interaction
among variables. VAR models have also been used extensively for forecast-
ing purposes, where these models have exhibited a better performance than
structural models, especially in out-of-sample forecasting.
 Specimen Examination

Unit 8 deals with models in which the dependent variable ie the variable
that needs to be explained by a set of determinants, is in fact a dummy
variable. There are many cases where these models can be useful. For
instance, financial analysts may be interested as to why some firms list on
the stock market while others don’t; why some firms issue dividends while
others don’t; and why some firms decide to raise external finance while
others don’t. In all these examples, what we observe is whether a firm lists
or not, issues dividends or not, or raises external finance or not. Thus, the
relevant dependent variable is a dummy variable that takes the value of 1 if
the event occurs, and zero if the event does not occur. Such models, known
as limited dependent variable models, raise a set of estimation issues that
are different from the ones you have encountered so far. The purpose of
this unit is to introduce you to limited dependent models and discuss how
these models can be applied to finance issues.

5 Learning Outcomes
After you complete your study of this module, you will be able to:
• define and compute measures of financial returns
• discuss the stylised statistical properties of asset returns
• formulate models using matrix notation
• derive the OLS estimators using matrix algebra
• explain the principles of maximum likelihood estimation
• derive the maximum likelihood estimators and discuss their properties
• use maximum likelihood estimation, and apply the hypothesis tests
available under maximum likelihood estimation
• analyse, estimate and forecast using autoregressive (AR), moving
average (MA), and autoregressive-moving average (ARMA) models
• apply the Box–Jenkins approach to time series models
• model and forecast volatility using autoregressive conditional
heteroscedastic (ARCH) models
• estimate, interpret and forecast with generalised autoregressive
conditional heteroscedastic (GARCH) models
• construct, estimate and interpret multivariate GARCH models
• test for spill-over of volatility between assets
• use vector autoregressive (VAR) models to analyse and interpret
interaction between financial variables, including impulse response
analysis
• undertake tests of hypotheses and Granger causality in a VAR
framework
• formulate, estimate and interpret limited dependent variable models,
including logit and probit models
• discuss models with multinomial linear dependent variables.
6 R
R is an implementation of the object-oriented mathematical programming language
S. It is developed by statisticians around the world and is free software, released
under the GNU General Public License. Syntactically and functionally it is very
similar (if not identical) to S+, the popular statistics package.
R is much more flexible than most software used by econometricians because it is a
modern mathematical programming language, not just a program that does regres-
sions and tests. The S language is the de facto standard for statistical science. Since
most users have a statistical background, the jargon used by R experts sometimes
differs from what an econometrician (especially a beginning econometrician) may
expect. Code written for R can be run on many computational platforms with or
without a graphical user interface, and R comes standard with some of the most
flexible and powerful graphics routines available anywhere. And of course, R is
completely free for any use.
(extracted from Farnsworth, 2008)
Because the R software is a programming language and not just an econo-
metrics program, some of the functions we will be interested in are available
through libraries (sometimes called packages) obtained from the R website
http://www.r-project.org/.
The data files required are available on the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

Starting up
The R software must be installed on your system. If it is not, follow the
installation instructions appropriate to the operating system (OS). Installa-
tion is especially straightforward for Windows users.

To install R
Go to the website of R http://www.r-project.org/.
There, choose your preferred CRAN mirror (eg
http://cran.ma.imperial.ac.uk/) and click on the link referring to your OS in
the box “Download and Install R”. Note that these units are written with the
version “Windows”, but Mac OS and Linux versions are also downloadable.
(CRAN mirrors are provided in locations around the world to reduce
download time and internet traffic.)
On the next page, click on “base” and you will be redirected to a page where
there will be a link to download the latest version of R. At the top will be
written something like “Download R 3.6.0 for Windows” (or whatever is the
most up-to-date version). Click on this link. Updated versions of R are made
available over time, but the commands explained in the module files should
be similar.
Save the file “R-3.6.0-win.exe” (or whatever is the latest version of the file) in
any location, for example on your Desktop. Double click on this file to start
the installation, and follow the instructions. You will be asked to choose the
 Specimen Examination

place where you want the file to be, and you can also choose to have a
shortcut to R in the Start Menu and a Desktop icon. Choose the standard
installation.

To get started with R

To open R, double click on the desktop icon or on the shortcut. The Com-
mand Window opens.
To use R, you can either type a command in the Command Window, or run
a pre-written program.
1. To type a command in the command window
You just type it on the line starting with > and press the key Enter on
your keyboard. Note that R is case sensitive. In the unit file, if it says
“type in” or “can be performed with”, this means “Type in the
following command in the command window and then press Enter”.
The unit files include all of the R commands required to work on the
examples and exercises. To save time, you can copy and paste the
required coding from the unit files into R. Note that if multiple lines of
code are pasted into R in one go, they will be executed in sequence
immediately, without the need to press Enter.
2. Every time you see the sign >, it means that R is ready for a new
command. When you do not see it or when you see the sign +, it means
that R is still working on a previous command or is stuck because your
command has not been properly written (for example, a bracket may
be missing at the end of the previous command). In this case, press the
red button STOP in the toolbar to stop the process.
3. To run a pre-written program
In the Menu bar go to File, then choose “New script”. A new Editor
Script Window opens.
You can type all commands you wish in this file, one command per
line. To run them on R, select with the mouse the commands you wish
to run, and then simultaneously press the keys CTRL and the key R
(CTRL + R) (or alternatively go to Edit in the Menu bar and choose
“Run line or selection”).
Save your program by choosing “Save as” in File in the Menu bar (the
Menu bar specific to the Editor, that is to say, the one that is available
when you are in the Editor Window, and not in the Command
Window). All script files have the extension “.R”. Then you can close it
and open it from the File menu in the Menu bar.
In your program file you can write things that are not commands (for
example, notes or explanations); but to indicate to R that these are not
commands, put the symbol # in front of each non-command line.
To get help at any time, go to Help in the Menu bar. Alternatively, there are
several methods of obtaining help in R. You may type in alternatively the
following commands:
 ?qt

help(qt)

help.start()
help.search("covariance")

The last command is for a search on the term covariance, for example. Please
note the use of the quotation marks " ". If you choose to develop R com-
mands in Word, for example, and then copy the commands to R, please
make sure you use the " " symbols, and not the Word symbols “ ”.
Preceding a command with a question mark, or writing a command as an
argument in help(), gives a description of its usage and functionality. The
help.start() function brings up a menu of help options, and help.search()
searches the help files for the word or phrase given as an argument. Many
times, though, the best help available can be found by a search online. The
help tools above only search through the R functions that belong to packages
already installed on your computer. However, often users have the follow-
ing type of question: “Does R have a function to do …”. Users do not know
if functionality exists because the corresponding package is not installed on
their computer, and therefore resort to the R website. To search the R web-
site for functions and references, use:
RSiteSearch("scatter plot")

This command example searches the R website for ‘scatter plot’ functions.
The results from the search should appear in your web browser.
By default, R has a couple of excellent free manuals in PDF format. If you are
not already familiar with using R you are advised to read An Introduction to
R. To access the manual, click Help | Manuals and the list of available
documents will be shown.
To quit R, in the Menu bar go to File, then choose “Exit”. You are asked
“Save workspace image”? Click on No.
In case R is installed in another language, to change the language of the
Menu bar into English, in the Menu bar choose Edit (second from the left in
the Menu bar) and then choose the last option “Preferences”. A new win-
dow opens. In the top right of it, there is an empty box for “Language for
menus and messages”. Type in this box “English” and click OK. You will
have to exit R and start it again.
You may want to specify a working directory for your R session, so that R
chooses data files (and scripts) directly from this directory; then there is no
need to specify the full path to access the files. The command getwd()
returns an absolute filename representing the current working directory of
the R process. The command setwd() helps you specify the working directo-
ry. For example, to set the working directory to “C:\Documents and
Settings\my files\R SOAS”, you would type in:
setwd("C:/Documents and Settings/my files/R SOAS")
 Specimen Examination

This avoids the need to put the command scripts and the data files within
the R directory on your computer. Note that, in this command, the slash / is
used.
Alternatively, you can set the working directory using File (on the Menu
bar), then Change dir… and then browse through the folders on your device
to select the folder you want to use as the working directory for that session.
To save your work, go to File | Save Workspace… Provide a filename for the
workspace, and it will be saved with the extension .RData. The file will be
saved in your current working directory, but you can browse to another
location if you prefer.
A saved workspace can be loaded with File | Load Workspace… R will
display files with the .Rdata extension in the current working directory, but
again, you can browse to other locations
Every time you start R, before running any command or program, it is best
to clean up any object that may remain in memory.
During an R session, objects are created and stored by name. The command
objects(), or the command ls(), can be used to display the names of the
objects which are currently stored within R. The command rm() removes a
data object whose name should be given as an argument.
To remove all objects, type in:
rm(list=ls())

Alternatively, use Misc | Remove all objects.

Removing all objects is useful if, for example, you work on one exercise and
dataset, then you want to work on another data set and exercise in the same
R session. If you do not remove the first set of objects before starting on the
second question, your workspace will contain objects you created for both
questions, which could be confusing. Remember to save a workspace before
removing all the objects!

Installing and loading packages

The basic setup for R provides considerable statistical and mathematical
functionality.
However, you will also need to use some of the more specialised economet-
ric functions that have been written for R, and made available in packages.
The module units will indicate when you need to use a particular function,
and the unit will also indicate which package is required.
To use a function from a package, the relevant package must be installed on
your machine. To install a package go to Packages | Install package(s)… You
will be asked to select a CRAN mirror for this session. Once the mirror has
been selected, you can choose from the list of available packages to install.
Some of the packages (for example dynlm) take a few minutes to install, but
installation of a package is a one-off procedure, and once the package is
installed, you will not need to install it again.
To use a package in an R session, the package must be loaded in that session.
Loading a package takes considerably less time than installing it. To load a
package, go to Packages | Load package… You will see a list of packages
that you have previously installed, and you can select the package you want
to load.
To summarise, to access a package it must first be installed on your device.
And to use the package in an R session, the package must be loaded in that
session.
If you try to use a function but you have not loaded the relevant package in
your R session, you will get an error message saying R could not find the
function.

Reading data from text files and creating zoo objects

The data for the examples and exercises in the module units is provided in
tab-delimited text files. R can read data from files in other formats, but tab-
delimited text files are very simple, they can be created and opened in many
applications, and they are robust to updates.
To work on the data in R, it must first be read from the text file into what is
called a data frame, using a read.table command. A data frame is a matrix or
table that contains the data in R. Once the data is in a data frame, it is then
possible to use R to perform various operations, such as plotting the data,
and estimating models.
However, many models in finance specifically focus on the time element of
the observations. Furthermore, financial data can have irregular dates. For
example, if you are using daily data, there may be no observations for
weekends and bank holidays. For these reasons we have mainly used ‘zoo’
objects to handle the data in R, rather than data tables or regularly dated
time series objects. The zoo package provides an infrastructure for regular
and irregular time series (Z's Ordered Observations – hence ‘zoo’), and is
maintained by Achim Zeileis (Zeileis and Grothendieck, 2005). The zoo
objects are indexed by the dates of the observations, which allows us to
perform operations that specifically relate to the timing of the data.
The commands for reading the data from the text files and creating the zoo
objects are provided in the units. These commands assume that the data text
files are located in the current working directory.

R outputs
The outputs that you obtain can be viewed in R, and can also be copied to
word processing applications. The tables of outputs in the module units
were obtained in R and formatted for production. Some of the formatted
tables of output were produced with the stargazer package (Hlavac, 2018).
Advice on how to use stargazer is also provided in the units, where relevant.
However, please note that it is not possible to use stargazer on the outputs
of all of the packages used in this module.
 Specimen Examination

References
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