We examine the lead-lag relation between intraday spot and futures prices for stock index where the component stocks are floor traded while the futures contract is screen traded. We find that futures prices lead spot prices by nearly 20 minutes. This is much longer than in markets where both the...

This paper presents a simple yet powerful new approach for valuing American options by simulation. The key to this approach is to use least squares to estimate the conditional expected payoff to the optionholder from continuation. This makes this approach readily applicable in path-dependent and...

When a leveraged real estate project experiences cash-flow problems, the owner must either inject additional cash or default on the mortgage. We show that it is not optimal for the owner to default as soon as net cash flow becomes negative. Surprisingly, the owner can expropriate some of the...

Although traded as distinct products, caps and swaptions are linked by no-arbitrage relations through the correlation structure of interest rates. Using a string model framework, we solve for the correlation matrix implied by the swaptions market and examine the relative valuation of caps and...

This paper studies the valuation and optimal exercise of American-style swaptions in a multi-factor string model of the term structure, and compares the results with those implied by standard single-factor term structure models. We find that single-factor models significantly undervalue...

We develop a simple approach to valuing risky corporate debt that incorporates both default and interest-rate risk. We use this approach to derive simple closed-form valuation expressions for fixed and floating rate debt. The model provides a number of interesting new insights about pricing and...

When a leveraged real estate project experiences cash-flow problems, the owner must either inject additional cash or default on the mortgage. We show that it is not optimal for the owner to default as soon as net cash flow becomes negative. Surprisingly, the owner can expropriate some of the...

When a leveraged real estate project experience cash-flow problems, the owner must either inject additional cash or default on the mortgage. We show that it is not optimal for the owner to default as soon as net cash flow becomes negative. Surprisingly, the owner can expropriate some of the...