Stochastic Volatility in Mean: Empirical evidence from Latin-American stock markets using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo and Riemann Manifold HMC methods

The Stochastic Volatility in Mean (SVM) model of Koopman and Uspensky (2002) is revisited. An empirical study of five Latin American indexes in order to see the impact of the volatility in the mean of the returns is performed. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) Hamiltonian dynamics is used to estimate latent volatilities and parameters. Our findings show that volatility has a negative impact on returns, indicating that volatility feedback effect is stronger than the effect related to the expected volatility. This result is clear and opposite to the finding of Koopman and Uspensky (2002).