The central premise of the Black and Scholes [Black, F., Scholes, M. (1973). The pricing of options and corporate liabilities. Journal of Political Economy 81, 637–659] and Merton [Merton, R. (1973). Theory of rational option pricing. Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 4,...

We document widespread violations of stochastic dominance in the one-month S&P 500 index options market over the period 1986-2002. These violations imply that a trader can improve her expected utility by engaging in a zero-net-cost trade. We allow the market to be incomplete and also imperfect...

American call and put options on the S&P 500 index futures that violate the stochastic dominance bounds of Constantinides and Perrakis (2007) over 1983-2006 are identified as potentially profitable investment opportunities. Call bid prices more frequently violate their upper bound than put bid...

We document widespread violations of stochastic dominance by one-month S&P 500 index call options market over 1986-2006. These violations imply that a trader can improve her expected utility by engaging in a zero-net-cost trade. We allow the market to be incomplete and also imperfect by...

American options on the S&P 500 index futures that violate the stochastic dominance bounds of Constantinides and Perrakis (2007) from 1983 to 2006 are identified as potentially profitable trades. Call bid prices more frequently violate their upper bound than put bid prices do, while violations...

American call and put options on the S&P 500 index futures that violate the stochastic dominance bounds of Constantinides and Perrakis (2007) over 1983-2006 are identified as potentially profitable investment opportunities. Call bid prices more frequently violate their upper bound than put bid...

Widespread violations of stochastic dominance by 1-month S&P 500 index call options over 1986--2006 imply that a trader can improve expected utility by engaging in a zero-net-cost trade net of transaction costs and bid-ask spread. Although precrash option prices conform to the...