Understanding the dynamics of interest rates and the term structure has important implications for issues as diverse as real economic activity, monetary policy, pricing of interest rate derivative securities and public debt financing. Our paper follows a longstanding tradition of using factor...

In recent years multivariate models for asset returns have received much attention, in particular this is the case for models with time varying volatility. In this paper we consider models of this class and examine their potential when it comes to option pricing. Specifically, we derive the risk...

Unlike European-type derivative securities, there are no simple analytic valuation formulas for American options, even when the underlying asset price has constant volatility. The early exercise feature considerably complicates the valuation of American contracts. The strategy taken in this...

In this paper, we consider American option contracts when the underlying asset has stochastic dividends and stochastic volatility. We provide a full discussion of the theoretical foundations of American option valuation and exercise boundaries. We show how they depend on the various sources of...

While stochastic volatility models improve on the option pricing error when compared to the Black-Scholes-Merton model, mispricings remain. This paper uses mixed normal heteroskedasticity models to price options. Our model allows for significant negative skewness and time varying higher order...

This paper uses asymmetric heteroskedastic normal mixture models to fit return data and to price options. The models can be estimated straightforwardly by maximum likelihood, have high statistical fit when used on S&P 500 index return data, and allow for substantial negative skewness and time...

Many continuous time term structure of interest rate models assume a factor structure where the drift and volatility functions are affine functions of the state variable process. These models involve very specific parametric choices of factors and functional specifications of the drift and...

This paper analyzes a large class of processes for the short-term interest rate that are derived in a discrete-time equilibrium framework. The dynamics of interest rates and yields are driven by the dynamics of the conditional volatility of the state variable. Under appropriate parameter...

We use a real option approach to determine optimally when a social planner has to stop or resume logging in situations where an endangered species relies on forest habitat for its survival, and that habitat evolves stochastically. The model incorporates economic, ecological and social features,...

Characterizing asset return dynamics using volatility models is an important part of empirical finance. The existing literature favors some rather complex volatility specifications whose relative performance is usually assessed through their likelihood based on a time-series of asset returns....