We study the estimation of moments and joint moments of microstructure noise. Estimators of arbitrary order of (joint) moments are provided, for which we establish consistency as well as central limit theorems. In particular, we provide estimators of auto-covariances and auto-correlations of the noise. Simulation studies demonstrate excellent performance of our estimators even in the presence of jumps and irregular observation times. Empirical studies reveal (moderate) positive auto-correlation of the noise for the stocks tested.

When estimating integrated volatilities based on high-frequency data, simplifying assumptions are usually imposed on the relationship between the observation times and the price process. In this paper, we establish a central limit theorem for the Realized Volatility in a general endogenous time setting. We also document that this endogeneity is present in financial data.

We consider the estimation of integrated covariance (ICV) matrices of high dimensional diffusion processes based on high frequency observations. We start by studying the most commonly used estimator, the realized covariance (RCV) matrix. We show that in the high dimensional case when the dimension p and the observation frequency n grow in the same rate, the limiting spectral distribution (LSD) of RCV depends on the covolatility process not only through the targeting ICV, but also on how the covolatility process varies in time. We establish a Marčenko-Pastur type theorem for weighted sample covariance matrices, based on which we obtain a Marčenko-Pastur type theorem for RCV for a class C of diffusion processes. The results explicitly demonstrate how the time variability of the covolatility process affects the LSD of RCV. We further propose an alternative estimator, the time-variation adjusted realized covariance (TVARCV) matrix. We show that for processes in class C, the TVARCV possesses the desirable property that its LSD depends solely on that of the targeting ICV through the Marčenko-Pastur equation, and hence, in particular, the TVARCV can be used to recover the empirical spectral distribution of the ICV by using existing algorithms.