An enhanced option pricing framework that makes use of both continuous and discontinuous time paths based on a geometric Brownian motion and Poisson-driven jump processes respectively is performed in order to better fit with real-observed stock price paths while maintaining the analytical...

A method to price American-style option contracts in a limited information framework is introduced. The pricing methodology is based on sequential Monte Carlo techniques, as presented in Doucet, de Freitas, and Gordon's text "Sequential Monte Carlo Methods in Practice", and the least-squares...

We introduce a new method to price American-style options on underlying investments governed by stochastic volatility (SV) models. The method does not require the volatility process to be observed. Instead, it exploits the fact that the optimal decision functions in the corresponding dynamic...

State price density (SPD) contains important information concerning market expectations. In existing literature, a constrained estimator of the SPD is found by nonlinear least squares in a suitable Sobolev space. We improve the behavior of this estimator by implementing a covariance structure...

State price density (SPD) contains important information concerning market expectations. In existing literature, a constrained estimator of the SPD is found by nonlinear least squares in a suitable Sobolev space...

I develop a new spectrum of moment bounds on the pricing kernel. They stem from the solution of an optimization problem that is complementary to Hansen and Jagannathan's (1991) approach. Economically, they measure the discrepancy between what an optimizing agent could achieve if all assets (that...

The illiquidity of long-maturity options has made it difficult to study the term structures of option spanning portfolios. This paper proposes a new estimation and inference framework for these option-implied term structures that addresses long-maturity illiquidity. By building a sieve estimator...

This paper presents a comprehensive comparison of nonparametric tests for jumps in the prices of financial assets. The relative performance of eight tests is examined in a Monte Carlo simulation covering scenarios of both finite and infinite activity jumps, and stochastic volatility models with...

In this paper, we show that despite the fact that Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) processes fall within the general specification of asset price dynamics studied by Lee and Mykland (2008), the finite sample performance of their two tests for additive jumps is far from being satisfactory when the process...

The illiquidity of long-maturity options has made it difficult to study the term structures of option spanning portfolios. This paper proposes a new estimation and inference framework for these option-implied term structures that addresses long-maturity illiquidity. By building a sieve estimator...