In this paper, an alternative approach to pricing barrier options is presented that relies on the use of the first hitting time density to the barrier. The lateral Chapman-Kolmogorov relation is used as a major tool in order to determine option prices. It turns out that this approach allows for...

Turbo-Certificates are one of the most popular structured equity products for private investors in Germany. They can be regarded as special forms of barrier options. The relation between the barrier level and the strike price is especially important for the design of these products. By using a...

The market model of interest rates specifies simple forward or Libor rates as lognormaly distributed, their stochastic dynamics has a linear volatility function. This model is extended to quadratic volatility which is the product of a quadratic polynomial and a level-independent covariance...

The following paper focuses on the incompleteness arising from model misspecification combined with trading restrictions. While asset price dynamics are assumed to be continuous time processes, the hedging of contingent claims occurs in discrete time. The trading strategies under consideration...

We study the effect of secondary markets on equity-linked life insurance contracts with surrender guarantees. The policyholders are assumed to be boundedly rational in giving up their contracts, and a proportion of policyholders will access the secondary markets instead of surrendering the...

The market model of interest rates specifies simple forward or Libor rates as lognormally distributed, their stochastic dynamics has a linear volatility function. In this paper, the model is extended to quadratic volatility functions which are the product of a quadratic polynomial and a...

In this paper we present a tree model for defaultable bond prices which can be used for the pricing of credit derivatives. The model is based upon the two-factor Hull-White (1994) model for default-free interest rates, where one of the factors is taken to be the credit spread of the defaultable...

The basic model of financial economics is the Samuelson model of geometric Brownian motion because of the celebrated Black-Scholes formula for pricing the call option. The asset's volatility is a linear function of the asset value and the model garantees positive asset prices. In this paper it...

In this paper a new credit risk model for credit derivatives is presented. The model is based upon the ‘Libor market’ modelling framework for default-free interest rates. We model effective default-free forward rates and effective forward credit spreads as lognormal diffusion processes, and...

This paper gives a simple introduction to portfolio credit risk models of the factor model type. In factor models, the dependence between the individual defaults is driven by a small number of systematic factors. When conditioning on the realisation of these factors the defaults become...