The analysis of volatility in financial markets has become a first rank issue in modern financial theory and practice: Whether in risk management, portfolio hedging, or option pricing, we need to have a precise notion of the market's expectation of volatility. Much research has been done on the...

A primary goal in modelling the dynamics of implied volatility surfaces (IVS) aims at reducing complexity. For this purpose one fits the IVS each day and applies a principal component analysis using a functional norm. This approach, however, neglects the degenerated string structure of the...

Based on daily VDAX data we analyse the factors governing the movements of implied volatilities of options on the German stock index DAX. We derive common factors representing shift and slope of the term structure of ATM implied volatilities. Further we present a risk management tool for option...

Nonparametric methods for estimating the implied volatility surface are very popular, since they do not impose a specific functional form on the estimate. Traditionally, these methods are two-step estimators. The first step requires to extract implied volatility data from observed option prices,...

In this paper we empirically analyze the pricing and dynamic hedging of barrier options in the local volatility model. It is known that local volatility is not a good description of economic reality. In practice, several ad-hoc modifications of the model exist to make it applicable. One of these...

We propose a semiparametric factor model, which approximates the implied volatility surface (IVS) in a finite dimensional function space. Unlike standard principal component approaches typically used to reduce complexity, our approach is tailored to the degenerated design of IVS data. In...

We propose a semiparametric factor model, which approximates the implied volatility surface (IVS) in a finite dimensional function space. Unlike standard principal component approaches typically used to reduce complexity, our approach is tailored to the degenerated design of IVS data. In...

We suggest a simple and general approach to fitting the discount curve under no-arbitrage constraints based on a penalized shape-constrained B-spline. Our approach accommodates B-splines of any order and fitting both under the L1 and the L2 loss functions. Simulations and an empirical analysis...

We evaluate the relevance of covariances in the transmission mechanism of variance spillovers across the US stock, US bond and gold markets from July 2003 to December 2012. For that purpose, we perform a comparative spillover analysis between a model that considers covariances and a model that...

We investigate the relationship between inflation and price variation using highly disaggregated, weekly price data for consumption goods recorded in Germany during 1995, a low inflation period. We find a significant positive correlation between the rates of price change and price dispersion,...