Estimation of integrated volatility in continuous time financial models with applications to goodness-of-fit testing

Properties of a specification test for the parametric form of the variance function in diffusion processes dXt = b (t,Xt) dt + σ (t,Xt) dWt are discussed. The test is based on the estimation of certain integrals of the volatility function. If the volatility function does not depend on the variable x it is known that the corresponding statistics have an asymptotic normal distribution. However, most models of mathematical finance use a volatility function which depends on the state x. In this paper we prove that in the general case, where σ depends also on x the estimates of integrals of the volatility converge stably in law to random variables with a non-standard limit distribution. The limit distribution depends on the diffusion process Xt itself and we use this result to develop a bootstrap test for the parametric form of the volatility function, which is consistent in the general diffusion model.