Empirical Finance: notes
Federico M. Bandi
Johns Hopkins University
c 2020 Federico M. Bandi
All Rights Reserved
Chapter 0 Empirical finance
Quick review of important facts about matrices
• Identity matrix. A square matrix with ones on the diagonal and zeros everywhere
else.
• Transposition. Let aij denote the row i, column j element of a matrix A : A = [aij ].
The transpose of A, denoted by A0 , is given by A0 = [aji ].
• Important properties:
(AB)0 = B 0 A0
(A + B)0 = A0 + B 0
0
• Symmetric matrices. A square matrix such that A = A is said to be symmetric.
• Trace. The trace of a square matrix is the sum of the elements along the diagonal.
• Important property:
tr(AB) = tr(BA)
• Determinant. The determinant of a 2 × 2 square matrix A, denoted by |A|, is the
scalar
|A| = a11 a22 − a12 a21
• One could of course define determinants for more general matrices than a simple
2 × 2 square matrix.
• Important properties:
1. The determinant of the identity matrix is 1.
2. For an n × n matrix A,
|σA| = σ n |A|
1
Chapter 0 Empirical finance
• Inverse. If the determinant of a square matrix exists, then its inverse exists and is
such that A × A−1 = I (the identity matrix). In the bi-variate case:
" #
1 a22 −a12
A−1 = .
a11 a22 − a12 a21 −a21 a11
• Eigenvalues and eigenvectors.
• Suppose that an n × n matrix A, a nonzero n × 1 vector x, and a scalar λ are related
by
Ax = λx.
• Then, x is called the eigenvector of A and λ is called the eigenvalue of A.
• Jordan decomposition. Every symmetric matrix A can be written as BΛB 0 , where
Λ is a matrix which contains the eigenvalues of A on the diagonal (and zeros ev-
erywhere else) and B is an orthogonal matrix consisting of the eigenvectors of A.
• A square orthogonal matrix is such that BB 0 = I and B −1 = B 0 .
• Idempotent matrices. A square matrix A such that AA = A is called idempotent.
• Important property: The eigenvalues of an idempotent matrix are either 1 or zero.
• Positive semidefinite. An n × n real symmetric matrix A is said to be positive
semidefinite if, for any real n × 1 vector x, x0 Ax ≥ 0.
• Important property: The eigenvalues of a positive semidefinite matrix are either
zero or positive.