This article presents a Markov chain framework to characterize the behavior of the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX index). Two possible regimes are considered: high volatility and low volatility. The specification accounts for deviations from normality and the existence of persistence in the...

Daily returns of financial assets are frequently found to exhibit positive autocorrelation at lag 1. When specifying a linear AR(l) conditional mean, one may ask how this predictability affects option prices. We investigate the dependence of option prices on autoregressive dynamics under...

This article analyzes whether daily realized volatility, which is the sum of squared intraday returns over a day, is useful for option pricing. Different realized volatilities are calculated with or without taking account of microstructure noise and with or without using overnight and lunch-time...

This paper shows how one can compute option prices from a Bayesian inference viewpoint, using an econometric model for the dynamics of the return and of the volatility of the underlying asset. The proposed evaluation of an option is the predictive expectation of its payoff function. The...

Despite the high volatilities recorded for electricity prices, there seems to be little demand for options on electricity. One reason for the disinterest in electricity options could arise from uncertainty about how to price these options. This study uses recent econometric advances to...

In this paper, we provide a new dynamic asset pricing model for plain vanilla options and we discuss its ability to produce minimum mispricing errors on equity option books. The data set is the daily log returns of the French CAC 40 index, on the period January 2, October 26, 2007. Under the...

This paper examines how well alternate time-changed Lévy processes capture stochastic volatility and the substantial outliers observed in U.S. stock market returns over the past 85 years. The autocorrelation of daily stock market returns varies substantially over time, necessitating an...

By extending the GARCH option pricing model of Duan (1995) to more flexible volatility estimation it is shown that the prices of out-of-the-money options strongly depend on volatility features such as asymmetry. Results are provided for the properties of the stationary pricing distribution in...

This paper uses asymmetric heteroskedastic normal mixture models to fit return data and to price options. The models can be estimated straightforwardly by maximum likelihood, have high statistical fit when used on S&P 500 index return data, and allow for substantial negative skewness and time...

The Samp;P 500 index return interacts negatively with its volatility. This paper traces the negative interaction to three distinct economic channels and proposes to disentangle the relative contribution of each channel using Samp;P 500 index options. First, equity volatility increases...