While the relationship between volatility and risk is central to much of thefinancial literature it has not been incorporated systematically into assessment ofsovereign debt sustainability. This paper attempts to fill this gap by studying how the probability distribution of sovereign debt to GDP...

This paper presents a theoretical study of how incentives affect hedge fund risk and returns and an empirical study of the performance of a large group of operating hedge funds. Most hedge fund managers receive a flat fee plus a share of the returns above a certain benchmark. We investigate how...

Two different probability measures are of importance when calculating the risk of a large portfolio: the risk-neutral measure for pricing, and the real measure to project true earnings. When using Monte Carlo, the natural method is to conduct two different simulations, one in each probability...

In this study we analyze the performance persistence of hedge funds over different time horizons. Using a non-parametric test, we first observe that the relative value and the specialist credit strategies contain the highest proportion of outperforming mangers. Furthermore, there is no evidence...

We introduce a new analytical approach to price American options. Using an explicit and intuitive proxy for the exercise rule, we derive tractable pricing formulas using a short-maturity asymptotic expansion. Depending on model parameters, this method can accurately price options with...

In this paper we construct arbitrage-free market models of stochastic volatility type for one stock, one bank account and a finite family of European call options with various strikes and maturities. We first introduce local implied volatilities and price level as market observables which...

In empirical modeling, there have been two strands for pricing in the options literature, namely the parametric and nonparametric models. Often, the support for the nonparametric methods is based on a benchmark such as theBlack-Scholes model with constant volatility. In this paper, we examine...

This paper investigates the impact of heterogeneous beliefs of professional investors on the currency options market. Using a unique data set with detailed information on the foreign-exchange forecasts of about 50 market participants over more than ten years, we construct an empirical proxy for...

In the existing literature on barrier options, much effort has been exerted to ensureconvergence through placing the barrier in close proximity to, or directly onto, thenodes of the tree lattice. In this paper we show that this may not be necessary toachieve accurate option price...

Financial models are largely used in option pricing. These physical models capture several salient features of asset price dynamics. The pricing performance can be significantly enhanced when they are combined with nonparametric learning approaches, that empirically learn and correct pricing...