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,...

Recently, Diebold and Li (2003) obtained good forecasting results foryield curves in a reparametrized Nelson-Siegel framework. We analyze similarmodeling approaches for price curves of variance swaps that serve nowadaysas hedging instruments for options on realized variance. We consider the...

The calibration of option pricing models leads to the minimization of an error functional. We show that its usual specification as a root mean squared error implies fluctuating exotics prices and possibly wrong prices...

Option pricing models are calibrated to market data of plain vanillas by minimization of an error functional. From the economic viewpoint, there are several possibilities to measure the error between the market and the model. These different specifications of the error give rise to different...

This paper analyzes empirical market utility functions and pricing kernelsderived from the DAX and DAX option data for three market regimes. Aconsistent parametric framework of stochastic volatility is used. All empiricalmarket utility functions show a region of risk proclivity that is...

We extend the definition of a convex risk measure to a conditionalframework where additional information is available. We characterize these riskmeasures through the associated acceptance sets and prove a representationresult in terms of conditional expectations. As an example we consider the...

In this paper we introduce the dynamic semiparametric factor model (DSFM) for electricity forward curves. The biggest advantage of our approach is that it not only leads to smooth,seasonal forward curves extracted from exchange traded futures and forward electricity contracts, but also to a...

High-dimensional regression problems which reveal dynamic behavior are typicallyanalyzed by time propagation of a few number of factors. The inference on thewhole system is then based on the low-dimensional time series analysis. Such highdimensional problems occur frequently in many different...

In January 2005 the EU-wide CO2 emissions trading system (EU-ETS) has formally entered into operation.Within the new trading system, the right to emit a particular amount of CO2 becomes a tradable commodity - called EU Allowances (EUAs) - and affected companies, traders and investors will face...

Implied volatility is one of the key issues in modern quantitative finance, since plain vanilla option prices contain vital information for pricing and hedging of exotic and illiquid options. European plain vanilla options are nowadays widely traded, which results in a great amount of...