The U.S. agency mortgage backed securities (MBS) market is deep and highly liquid, yet modeling MBS is extremely challenging. This paper applies market participants' desired requirements for a good pricing model to MBS pricing models provided by six of the top MBS dealers. We find that five out...

As is well known, the classic Black­Scholes option pricing model assumes that returns follow Brownian motion. It is widely recognized that return processes differ from this benchmark in at least three important ways. First, asset prices jump, leading to non­normal return innovations. Second,...

We propose a direct and robust method for quantifying the variance risk premium on financial assets. We theoretically and numerically show that the risk-neutral expected value of the return variance, also known as the variance swap rate, is well approximated by the value of a particular...

This paper investigates the joint hypothesis of market efficiency and unbiasedness of futures prices for the FTSE-20 blue chip index futures contract. The FTSE/ATHENS STOCK EXCHANGE (ASE)-20 futures market is the first organized derivatives market established in Greece and its operation rests...

The FTSE/ASE-20 futures market, as the first organised Greek derivatives market, established in August 1999 and its operation rests with the Athens Derivatives Exchange (ADEX) and the Athens Derivatives Exchange Clearing House (ADECH). Cointegration tests are used and an error correction model...

This paper presents an analysis of two forms of overreaction (generalized overreaction and overreaction to prior earnings changes) in analysts’ earnings forecasts for the UK stock market, using a sample of individual forecasts of earning per share from a British investment bank over the period...

This paper investigates the hedging effectiveness of the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 stock index futures contract using weekly settlement prices for the period July 3rd, 1992 to June 30th, 2002. Particularly, it focuses on three areas of interest: the determination of the appropriate model for...

From the CAC40 French stock index, we induce the implied market factor’s level through the inversion of a closed form pricing formula for European calls on the CAC40. For this purpose, we assume that the CAC40 index is a disturbed observation of the actual market factor, the market factor’s...

Prices of currency options commonly differ from the Black-Scholes formula along two dimensions: implied volatilities vary by strike price (volatility smiles) and maturity (implied volatility of at­the­money options increases, on average, with maturity). We account for both using Gram­Charlier...

Dynamic term structure models (DTSMs) price interest rate derivatives based on the model­ implied fair values of the yield curve, ignoring any pricing residuals on the yield curve that are either from model approximations or market imperfections. In contrast, option pricing in practice often...