We develop a new approach to pricing and hedging contingent claims in incomplete markets. Mimicking as closely as possible in an incomplete markets framework the no--arbitrage arguments that have been developed in complete markets leads us to defining the concept of pseudo--arbitrage. Building...

In this survey we discuss models with level-dependent and stochastic volatility from the viewpoint of erivative asset analysis. Both classes of models are generalisations of the classical Black-Scholes model; they have been developed in an effort to build models that are flexible enough to cope...

An equity-linked life insurance contract combines an endowment life insurance and an investment strategy with a minimum guarantee. The benefit of this contract is determined by the guaranteed amount plus a bonus equal to a call on the portfolio. This bonus is similar to an Asian option. We...

In this paper it is shown that the space of stochastic integrals w.r. to a special semimartingal is closed and hence every square integrable random variable admits a best approximation in this space. In terms of financial economics this means that for every contingent claim there exists a...

If calibrated to an observed term structure of interest rates that only covers a finite range of times-to-maturity an HJM-model of the term structure of interest rates will eventually die out in finite time as bonds reach maturity. This poses problems for the pricing and hedging of certain...

Let X be a seminmartingale and Teta the space of all predictable X-integrable processes teta such that integral tetat dX is inthe space S square of semimartingales. We consider the problem of approximating a given random variable H element of L square (P) by the sum of a constant c and a...

We study the problem of convergence of discrete-time option values to continuous-time option values. While previous papers typically concentrate on the approximation of geometric Brownian motion by a binomial tree, we consider here the case where the model is incomplete in both continuos and...

This paper proposes a new explanation for the smile and skewness effects in implied volatilities. Starting from a microeconomic equilibrium approach, we develop a diffusion model for stock prices explicitly incorporating the technical demand induced by hedging strategies. This leads to a...

This paper examines the pricing of options by approximating extensions of the Black-Scholes setup in which volatility follows a separate diffusion process. It gereralizes the well-known binomial model, constructing a discrete two-dimensional lattice. We discuss convergence issues extensively and...

In this paper a stochastic volatility model is presented that directly prescribes the stochastic development of the implied Black-Scholes volatilities of a set of given standard options. Thus the model is able to capture the stochastic movements of a full term structure of implied volatilities....