Volatility clustering in the presence of time-varying model parameters

The volatility pattern of financial time series is often characterized by several peaks and abrupt changes, consistent with the time-varying coefficients of the underlying data-generating process. As a consequence, the model-based classification of the volatility of a set of assets could vary over a period of time.We propose a procedure to classify the unconditional volatility obtained from an extended family of Multiplicative Error Models with time-varying coefficients to verify if it changes in correspondence with different regimes or particular dates. The proposed procedure is experimented on 15 stock indices.