Stochastic volatility models have been widely appreciated to model the time-varying volatility in empirical finance. In practice, whether or not there is leverage effect in asset time series is one of important stylized facts. In this paper, in the context of the stochastic volatility models, the main purpose is to develop a Bayesian approach for testing the leverage effect. The performance of the developed procedure is illustrated by the simulation studies and two empirical examples.

In empirical finance, interest rate models have been widely used for modeling short-term interest rate. Under the framework of the hypothesis testing, this paper provides a Bayesian approach for comparing a range of alternative models. These compared models are nested in a general single-factor diffusion process for the short-term interest rate, with each alternative model indexed by the level effect parameter for the volatility. The performance of the developed procedure is illustrated by an empirical example of Eurodollar deposit rates.