Testing for simultaneous jumps in case of asynchronous observations

This paper proposes a novel test for simultaneous jumps in a bivariate It\^o semimartingale when observation times are asynchronous and irregular. Inference is built on a realized correlation coefficient for the jumps of the two processes which is estimated using bivariate power variations of Hayashi-Yoshida type without an additional synchronization step. An associated central limit theorem is shown whose asymptotic distribution is assessed using a bootstrap procedure. Simulations show that the test works remarkably well in comparison with the much simpler case of regular observations.