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On fitting the Pareto–Levy distribution to stock market index data: Selecting a suitable cutoff value

✍ Scribed by H.F. Coronel-Brizio; A.R. Hernández-Montoya


Publisher
Elsevier Science
Year
2005
Tongue
English
Weight
386 KB
Volume
354
Category
Article
ISSN
0378-4371

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✦ Synopsis


The so-called Pareto-Levy or power-law distribution has been successfully used as a model to describe probabilities associated to extreme variations of stock markets indexes worldwide. The selection of the threshold parameter from empirical data and consequently, the determination of the exponent of the distribution, is often done using a simple graphical method based on a log-log scale, where a power-law probability plot shows a straight line with slope equal to the exponent of the power-law distribution. This procedure can be considered subjective, particularly with regard to the choice of the threshold or cutoff parameter. In this work, a more objective procedure based on a statistical measure of discrepancy between the empirical and the Pareto-Levy distribution is presented.