An ECM algorithm for Skewed Multivariate Variance Gamma Distribution in Normal Mean-Variance Representation

Abstract: Normal mean-variance mixture distributions are widely applied to simplify a model's implementation and improve their computational efficiency under the Maximum Likelihood (ML) approach. Especially for distributions with normal mean-variance mixtures representation such as the multivariate skewed variance gamma (MSVG) distribution, it utilises the expectation-conditional-maximisation (ECM) algorithm to iteratively obtain the ML estimates. To facilitate application to financial time series, the mean is further extended to include autoregressive terms. Techniques are proposed to deal with the unbounded density for small shape parameter and to speed up the convergence. Simulation studies are conducted to demonstrate the applicability of this model and examine estimation properties. Finally, the MSVG model is applied to analyse the returns of five daily closing price market indices and standard errors for the estimated parameters are computed using Louis's method.