The Blumenthal-Getoor (BG) index characterizes the jump measure of an infinitely active Lévy process. It determines sample path properties and affects the behavior of various econometric procedures. If the process contains a diffusion term, existing estimators of the BG index based on high-frequency observations only achieve rates of convergence which are suboptimal by a polynomial factor. In this paper, a novel estimator for the BG index and the successive BG indices is presented, attaining the optimal rate of convergence. If an additional proportionality factor needs to be inferred, the proposed estimator is rate-optimal up to logarithmic factors. Furthermore, our method yields a new efficient volatility estimator which accounts for jumps of infinite variation. All parameters are estimated jointly by the generalized method of moments. A simulation study compares the finite sample behavior of the proposed estimators with competing methods from the financial econometrics literature.

The Blumenthal-Getoor (BG) index characterizes the jump measure of an infinitely active Lévy process. It determines sample path properties and affects the behavior of various econometric procedures. If the process contains a diffusion term, existing estimators of the BG index based on high-frequency observations achieve rates of convergence which are suboptimal by a polynomial factor. In this paper, a novel estimator for the BG index and the successive BG indices is presented, attaining the optimal rate of convergence. If an additional proportionality factor needs to be inferred, the proposed estimator is rate-optimal up to logarithmic factors. Furthermore, our method yields a new efficient volatility estimator which accounts for jumps of infinite variation. All parameters are estimated jointly by the generalized method of moments. A simulation study compares the finite sample behavior of the proposed estimators with competing methods from the financial econometrics literature.

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Consider the sum Y = B + B(H) of a Brownian motion B and an independent fractional Brownian motion B(H) with Hurst parameter H ∈ (0, 1). Surprisingly, even though B(H) is not a semimartingale, Cheridito proved in [Bernoulli 7 (2001) that Y is a semimartingale if H > 3/4. Moreover, Y is locally equivalent to B in this case, so H cannot be consistently estimated from local observations of Y . This paper pivots on a second surprise in this model: if B and B(H) become correlated, then Y will never be a semimartingale, and H can be identified, regardless of its value. This and other results will follow from a detailed statistical analysis of a more general class of processes called mixed semimartingales, which are semiparametric extensions of Y with stochastic volatility in both the martingale and the fractional component. In particular, we derive consistent estimators and feasible central limit theorems for all parameters and processes that can be identified from high-frequency observations. We further show that our estimators achieve optimal rates in a minimax sense. The estimation of mixed semimartingales with correlation is motivated by applications to high-frequency financial data contaminated by rough noise.