Market option prices in last 20 years confirmed deviations from the Black and Scholes (BS) models assumptions, especially on the BS implied volatility. Implied binomialtrees (IBT) models capture the variations of the implied volatility known as \volatility smile". They provide a discrete...

In the era of Basel II a powerful tool for bankruptcy prognosis isvital for banks. The tool must be precise but also easily adaptable tothe bank's objections regarding the relation of false acceptances (TypeI error) and false rejections (Type II error). We explore the suitabil-ity of Smooth...

Die Prognose der Insolvenzgefährdung von Unternehmen anhand statistischer Methodik war und ist eine bedeutende Aufgabe empirischer Forschung. Eine Möglichkeit der Beurteilung der finanziellen bzw. wirtschaftlichen Verfassung von Unternehmen stellt die sog. externe Bilanzanalyse anhand...

This paper proposes a rating methodology that is based on a non-linear classification method, the support vector machine, and a non-parametric technique for mapping rating scores into probabilities of default. We give an introduction to underlying statistical models and represent the results of...

In the ideal Black-Scholes world, financial time series are assumed 1) stationary (time homogeneous) and 2) having conditionally normal distribution given the past. These two assumptions have been widely-used in many methods such as the RiskMetrics, one risk management method considered as...

Predicting default probabilities is important for firms and banks to operate successfully and to estimate their specific risks. There are many reasons to use nonlinear techniques for predicting bankruptcy from financial ratios. Here we propose the so called Support Vector Machine (SVM) to...

A new algorithm for finding value functions of finite horizon optimal stopping problems in one-dimensional diffusion models is presented. It is based on a time discretization of the corresponding integral equation. The proposed iterative procedure for solving the discretized integral equation...

State price densities (SPD) are an important element in applied quantitativefinance. In a Black-Scholes model they are lognormal distributions with constant volatility parameter. In practice volatility changes and the distribution deviates from log-normality. We estimate SPDs using EUREX option...

The Black-Scholes formula, one of the major breakthroughs of modern finance,allows for an easy and fast computation of option prices. But some of its assumptions, like constant volatility or log-normal distribution of asset prices,do not find justification in the markets. More complex models,...