We extend the range-based approach of Alizadeh et al. (2002) in order to deal with leverage and size effects and nonnormal conditional distribution in Stochastic Volatility (SV) models. We employ the Efficient Importance Sampling (EIS) method to estimate the range-based asymmetric SV models. Empirical results for the stock market indices of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN5) countries show that the conditional distributions of stock returns are nonnormal and that the model considered captures the existence/absence of the leverage and size effects.
