In this thesis, we investigate, and develop further, a stochastic volatility modelo named local scale model. This model deals the precision, which is the inverse of the variance unobserved component, and so fits within the framework of structural time series models, the precision is assumed to be a Gamma variable, which evolves through a multiplicative equation, scaled by a Beta variable. The measurement density is Gaussian, conditional on the unobserved precision, and the resulting forecast is a Student`s t density, with a scale which is approximately an exponencially weighted moving average (EWMA) of the sqares of the past observations. The degrees of freedom of the Student`s t distribution are controlled by the size of the discount parameter of the EWMA scheme. The Gaussiannity of the measurement density is potentially inadequate when the model is applied to heavy tailed finance data. Instead, this assumption can be replaced by an exponential power density, which allows the modeling of the observed excess kurtosis. The extension of the model to account for explanatory variables is straightforward. Confidence intervals for the parameters are obtained by Bootstrap. The model fits like the GARCH(1,1)mand AR(1)- SV, but the local scale model, besides being easier to fit, provides a more parcimonious alternative to the GARCH (1,1) model, and has an exact filter, rather than a best linear one, like in the AR(1)-SV.