This paper studies polar sets of anisotropic Gaussian random elds, i.e. sets which a Gaussian random eld does not hit almost surely. The main assumptions are that the eigenvalues of the covariance matrix are bounded from below and that the canonical metric associated with the Gaussian random eld...

We study the nonparametric calibration of exponential, self-decomposable Lévy models whose jump density can be characterized by the k-function, which is typically nonsmooth at zero. On the one hand the estimation of the drift, the activity measure a := k(0+) + k(0-) and analog parameters for...

Observing prices of European put and call options, we calibrate exponential Lévy models nonparametrically. We discuss the implementation of the spectral estimation procedures for Lévy models of finite jump activity as well as for self-decomposable Lévy models and improve these methods....

Confidence intervals and joint confidence sets are constructed for the nonparametric calibration of exponential Lévy models based on prices of European options. This is done by showing joint asymptotic normality for the estimation of the volatility, the drift, the intensity and the Lévy...

In this paper we solve the discrete time mean-variance hedging problem when asset returns follow a multivariate autoregressive hidden Markov model. Time dependent volatility and serial dependence are well established properties of financial time series and our model covers both. To illustrate...

The objective of this paper is to perform a joint analysis of jump activity for commodities and their respective volatility indices. Exploiting the property that for affine jump-diffusion models a volatility index, which is quoted on the market, is an affine function of the instantaneous...

We investigate the problem of calibrating an exponential Lévy model based on market prices of vanilla options. We show that this inverse problem is in general severely ill-posed and we derive exact minimax rates of convergence. The estimation procedure we propose is based on the explicit...

We employ a refined tree method to value employee stock options (ESOs) in the stochastic volatility model of Heston. Our setting covers risk-averse employees maximizing expected utility where we in particular focus on subjective option valuation, personal market beliefs and stochastic...

A Lévy process is observed at time points of distance delta until time T. We construct an estimator of the Lévy-Khinchine characteristics of the process and derive optimal rates of convergence simultaneously in T and delta. Thereby, we encompass the usual low- and high-frequency assumptions...