Inference for a mean-reverting stochastic process with multiple change points

Abstract

The use of an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) process is ubiquitous in business, economics and finance to capture various price processes and evolution of economic indicators exhibiting mean-reverting properties. The time at which structural transition representing drastic changes in the economic dynamics occur are of particular interest to policy makers, investors and financial product providers. This paper addresses the change-point problem under a generalised OU model and investigates the associated statistical inference. We propose two estimation methods to locate multiple change points and show the asymptotic properties of the estimators. An informational approach is employed in detecting the change points, and the consistency of our methods is also theoretically demonstrated. Estimation is considered under the setting where both the number and location of change points are unknown. Three computing algorithms are further developed for implementation. The practical applicability of our methods is illustrated using simulated and observed financial market data.