---
title: "State-space models"
author: "Jan-Ole Koslik"
output: rmarkdown::html_vignette
# output: pdf_document
vignette: >
  %\VignetteIndexEntry{State space models}
  %\VignetteEngine{knitr::rmarkdown}
  %\VignetteEncoding{UTF-8}
bibliography: refs.bib
link-citations: yes
---

```{r, include = FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>",
  # fig.path = "img/",
  fig.align = "center",
  fig.dim = c(8, 6),
  out.width = "85%"
)
```

> Before diving into this vignette, we recommend reading the vignette [**Introduction to LaMa**](https://janoleko.github.io/LaMa/articles/Intro_to_LaMa.html).

This vignette shows how to fit state-space models which can be interpreted as generalisation of HMMs to continuous state spaces. Several approaches exist to fitting such models, but @langrock2011some showed that very **general state-space models** can be fitted via approximate maximum likelihood estimation, when the continous state space is **finely discretised**. This is equivalent to numerical integration over the state process using midpoint quadrature.

Here, we will showcase this approach for a basic **stochastic volatily model** which, while being very simple, captures most of the stylised facts of financial time series. In this model the unobserved marked volatility is described by an AR(1) process:

$$
g_t = \phi g_{t-1} + \sigma \eta_t, \qquad \eta_t \sim N(0,1),
$$
with autoregression parameter $\phi < 1$ and dispersion parameter $\sigma$. Share returns $y_t$ can then be modelled as
$$
y_t = \beta \epsilon_t \exp(g_t / 2),
$$
where $\epsilon_t \sim N(0,1)$ and $\beta > 0$ is the baseline standard deviation of the returns (when $g_t$ is in equilibrium), which implies
$$
y_t \mid g_t \sim N(0, (\beta e^{g_t / 2})^2).
$$

### Simulating data from the stochastic volatility model

We start by simulating data from the above specified model:

```{r, setup}
# loading the package
library(LaMa)
```

```{r data}
beta = 2 # baseline standard deviation
phi = 0.95 # AR parameter of the log-volatility process
sigma = 0.5 # variability of the log-volatility process

n = 1000
set.seed(123)
g = rep(NA, n)
g[1] = rnorm(1, 0, sigma / sqrt(1-phi^2)) # stationary distribution of AR(1) process
for(t in 2:n){
  # sampling next state based on previous state and AR(1) equation
  g[t] = rnorm(1, phi*g[t-1], sigma)
}
# sampling zero-mean observations with standard deviation given by latent process
y = rnorm(n, 0, beta * exp(g/2)) 

# share returns
oldpar = par(mar = c(5,4,3,4.5)+0.1)
plot(y, type = "l", bty = "n", ylim = c(-40,20), yaxt = "n")
# true underlying standard deviation
lines(beta*exp(g)/7 - 40, col = "deepskyblue", lwd = 2)
axis(side=2, at = seq(-20,20,by=5), labels = seq(-20,20,by=5))
axis(side=4, at = seq(0,150,by=75)/7-40, labels = seq(0,150,by=75))
mtext("standard deviation", side=4, line=3, at = -30)
par(oldpar)
```

### Writing the negative log-likelihood function

To calculate the likelihood, we need to integrate over the state space. We approximate this high-dimensional integral using a midpoint quadrature which ultimately results in a fine discretisation of the continuous state space into the intervals `b` with width `h` and midpoints `bstar` [@langrock2011some]. Thus, the likelihood below corresponds to a basic HMM likelihood with a large number of states.

```{r mllk}
nll = function(par, y, bm, m){
  phi = plogis(par[1])
  sigma = exp(par[2])
  beta = exp(par[3])
  b = seq(-bm, bm, length = m+1) # intervals for midpoint quadrature
  h = b[2] - b[1] # interval width
  bstar = (b[-1] + b[-(m+1)]) / 2 # interval midpoints
  # approximating t.p.m. resulting from midpoint quadrature
  Gamma = sapply(bstar, dnorm, mean = phi * bstar, sd = sigma) * h
  delta = h * dnorm(bstar, 0, sigma / sqrt(1-phi^2)) # stationary distribution
  # approximating state-dependent density based on midpoints
  allprobs = t(sapply(y, dnorm, mean = 0, sd = beta * exp(bstar/2)))
  # forward algorithm
  -forward(delta, Gamma, allprobs)
}
```

### Fitting an SSM to the data

```{r model, warning=FALSE, cache = TRUE}
par = c(qlogis(0.95), log(0.3), log(1))
bm = 5 # relevant range of underlying volatility (-5,5)
m = 100 # number of approximating states

system.time(
  mod <- nlm(nll, par, y = y, bm = bm, m = m)
)
```

### Results

```{r results}
## parameter estimates
(phi = plogis(mod$estimate[1]))
(sigma = exp(mod$estimate[2]))
(beta = exp(mod$estimate[3]))

## decoding states
b = seq(-bm, bm, length = m+1) # intervals for midpoint quadrature
h = b[2]-b[1] # interval width
bstar = (b[-1] + b[-(m+1)])/2 # interval midpoints
Gamma = sapply(bstar, dnorm, mean = phi*bstar, sd = sigma) * h
delta = h * dnorm(bstar, 0, sigma/sqrt(1-phi^2)) # stationary distribution
# approximating state-dependent density based on midpoints
allprobs = t(sapply(y, dnorm, mean = 0, sd = beta * exp(bstar/2)))

# actual decoding
probs = stateprobs(delta, Gamma, allprobs) # local/ soft decoding
states = viterbi(delta, Gamma, allprobs) # global/ hard decoding

oldpar = par(mar = c(5,4,3,4.5)+0.1)
plot(y, type = "l", bty = "n", ylim = c(-50,20), yaxt = "n")
# when there are so many states it is not too sensable to only plot the most probable state,
# as its probability might still be very small. Generally, we are approximating continuous 
# distributions, thus it makes sense to plot the entire conditional distribution.
maxprobs = apply(probs, 1, max)
for(t in 1:nrow(probs)){
  colend = round((probs[t,]/(maxprobs[t]*5))*100)
  colend[which(colend<10)] = paste0("0", colend[which(colend<10)])
  points(rep(t, m), bstar*4-35, col = paste0("#FFA200",colend), pch = 20)
}
# we can add the viterbi decoded volatility levels as a "mean"
lines(bstar[states]*4-35)

axis(side=2, at = seq(-20,20,by=5), labels = seq(-20,20,by=5))
axis(side=4, at = seq(-5,5, by = 5)*4-35, labels = seq(-5,5, by = 5))
mtext("g", side=4, line=3, at = -30)
par(oldpar)
```
<!-- Lastly, we can check if this model is adequate by computing pseudo-residuals using the `pseudo_res()` function. We just have to pass the observations, the decoded state probabilities, the distribution to use and the state-dependent parameters. In this case, the state-dependent mean is fixed at zero while the standard deviation is $\beta \exp(g_t / 2)$. If the model is correctly specified, these residuals should be standard normally distributed. -->

<!-- ```{r resiudals} -->
<!-- pres = pseudo_res(y, probs, "norm", -->
<!--                   list(mean = 0, sd = beta * exp(bstar / 2))) -->

<!-- oldpar = par(mfrow = c(1,2)) -->
<!-- hist(pres, prob = TRUE, bor = "white") -->
<!-- curve(dnorm(x), lty = 2, add = TRUE) -->
<!-- qqnorm(pres, pch = 16, col = "#00000020", bty = "n") -->
<!-- qqline(pres, col = "orange") -->
<!-- par(oldpar) -->
<!-- ``` -->

<!-- We see that, overall, the model fit looks reasonable, but there are deviations in the tails. This is very typical for the basic SV model using a normal distribution as the **tail-risk** is not well captured. The residuals above would suggest that a model using a t-distribution for $\epsilon_t$ is more adequate as it can accommodate heavier tails. -->

## References