The implied volatility surface (IVS) is a fundamental building block in computational finance. We provide a survey of methodologies for constructing such surfaces. We also discuss various topics which can influence the successful construction of IVS in practice: arbitrage-free conditions in both...

We derive a general formula for pricing options with barrier and/or lookback features, which covers several types of options studied in the literature and new types of options, and demonstrate that the pricing formula can be efficiently realized using the methodology developed in Kudryavtsev and...

We develop the idea of using Monte Carlo sampling of random portfolios to solve portfolio investment problems. We explore the need for more general optimization tools, and consider the means by which constrained random portfolios may be generated. DeVroye's approach to sampling the interior of a...

This paper compares option pricing models, based on the Black model (Black, 1976), with particular emphasis on volatility measures and estimators applied in the process of valuation. We calculate the Black model with historical (BHV), implied (BIV) and several different types of realized (BRV)...

Option pricing models are the main subject of many research papers prepared both in academia and financial industry. We check the properties of option pricing models with different assumptions concerning the volatility process (historical, realized, implied, stochastic or GARCH model). For this...

In this paper we introduce and study the concept of optimal and surely optimal dual martingales in the context of dual valuation of Bermudan options, and outline the development of new algorithms in this context. We provide a characterization theorem, a theorem which gives conditions for a...

This paper considers the problem of European option pricing in the presence of proportional transaction costs when the price of the underlying follows a jump diffusion process. Using an approach that is based on maximization of the expected utility of terminal wealth, we transform the option...

We propose a model of hedging and investment with ambiguity aversion in an incomplete financial market. We show that the agent's worst-case belief depends upon the payoff of the derivative to be hedged. Thus, we identify situations where one can distinguish ambiguity averse agents from...

This paper proposes a new method to calculate model-free implied volatility from a calibrated option price surface. This circumvents common interpolation/extrapolation problems found in established methodologies, where prices enter calculation directly, and is numerically more stable. Areas...

We investigate American options in a multiple prior setting of continuous time and determine optimal exercise strategies form the perspective of an ambiguity averse buyer. The multiple prior setting relaxes the presumption of a known distribution of the stock price process and captures the idea...