Pricing financial or real options with arbitrary payoffs in regime-switching models is an important problem in finance. Mathematically, it is to solve, under certain standard assumptions, a general form of optimal stopping problems in regime-switching models. In this article, we reduce an...

This paper establishes the second-order convergence rates of the continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) approximation method for pricing continuously monitored occupation time derivatives (step options, conditional Asian options) and arithmetic Asian options and their Greeks. We fill the gap in the...

We propose an explicit closed-form approximation formula for the price of discretely monitored single or double barrier options whose underlying asset evolves according to a generic one-dimensional Markov process. This set of stochastic processes includes, but is not limited to, diffusion and...

Recently, Cai et al. (2015) proposed closed-form double transform approxima- tion formulas for prices of both discretely and continuously monitored Asian options under the setting of a general continuous-time Markov chain. In this note, we analytically invert the Z−transform and the Laplace...

We provide evidence of a strong effect of the underlying stock's illiquidity on option prices by showing that the average absolute difference between historical and implied volatility increases with stock illiquidity. This pattern translates into significant excess returns of option trading...

A new method to retrieve the risk-neutral probability measure from observed option prices is developed and a closed form pricing formula for European options is obtained by employing a modified Gram-Charlier series expansion, known as the Gauss-Hermite expansion. This expansion converges for...

I document a sizeable bias that might arise when valuing out of the money American options via the Least Square Method proposed by Longstaff and Schwartz (2001). The key point of this algorithm is the regression-based estimate of the continuation value of an American option. If this regression...

This paper demonstrates that it is possible to improve significantly on the estimated call prices obtained with the regression and simulation-based least-squares Monte Carlo method by using put-call symmetry. The results show that, for a large sample of options with characteristics of relevance...

In this paper we introduce an additive two-factor model for electricity futures prices based on Normal Inverse Gaussian Lévy processes, that fulfills a no-overlapping-arbitrage (NOA) condition. We compute European option prices by Fourier transform methods, introduce a specific calibration...

Option prices seem to behave in ways inconsistent with the Black-Scholes model. Implied volatility varies with the strike price in a parabolic shape that is often called the volatility 'smile.' My objective in this paper is to identify implied probability distributions that might explain this...