A Pricing and Hedging Comparison of Parametric and Nonparametric Approaches for American Index Options

This article investigates the extent to which options on the Australian Stock Price Index can be explained by parametric and nonparametric option pricing techniques. In particular, comparisons are made of out-of-sample option pricing performance and hedging performance. The dataset differs from many of those used previously in the empirical options pricing literature in that it consists of American options. In addition, a broader spectrum of techniques are considered: a spline-based nonparametric technique is considered in addition to the standard kernel techniques, while the performance of a Heston stochastic volatility model is also considered. Although some evidence is found of superior performance by nonparametric techniques for in-sample pricing, the parametric methods exhibit a markedly better ability to explain future prices and show superior hedging performance