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...

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...

We extend the credit risk valuation framework introduced by Gatfaoui (2003) to stochastic volatility models. We state a general setting for valuing risky debt in the light of systematic risk and idiosyncratic risk, which are known to affect each risky asset in the financial market. The option...

We identify and characterize a class of term structure models where bond yields are quadratic functions of the state vector. We label this class the quadratic class and aim to lay a solid theoretical foundation for its future empirical application. We consider asset pricing in general and...

We document a surprising pattern in market prices of S&P 500 index options. When implied volatilities are graphed against a standard measure of moneyness, the implied volatility smirk does not flatten out as maturity increases up to the observable horizon of two years. This behavior contrasts...

We develop a simple robust test for the presence of continuous and discontinuous (jump) com­ponents in the price of an asset underlying an option. Our test examines the prices of at­the­money and out­of­the­money options as the option maturity approaches zero. We show that these prices...

Starting from the European option valuation framework of Chauveau & Gatfaoui (2002), we establish the link with stochastic volatility models. And, we propose both a new vision and a general framework for valuing European options in the light of systematic and idiosyncratic risks affecting risky...