A time homogeneous, purely discontinuous, parsimonous Markov martingale model is proposed for the risk neutral dynamics of equity forward prices. Transition probabilities are in the variance gamma class with spot dependent parameters. Markov chain approximations give access to option prices. The...

Statistical theory has been relatively absent in the exercise of estimating parameters of an option pricing model from cross-sectional data at a fixed point of calendar time. The cross-sectional data typically consists of prices for options at various strikes and maturities at market close. The...

A growing body of literature confirms the significance of the commodity futures basis factor: It has a significantly positive premium and it explains the cross-section of commodity-futures excess returns. We extend the literature by documenting predictive relation between this factor and the...

We propose a non-equidistant Q rate matrix setting formula such that a well-defined continuous time Markov chain can lead to excellent approximations to jump-diffusions with affine or non-affine functional specifications. This approach also accommodates state-dependent jump intensity and jump...

This paper analyses the intraday co-movements between returns on several commodity markets and on the stock market in the United States over the 1997-2011 period. By exploiting a new high frequency database, we compute various rolling correlations at (i) 1-hour, (ii) 5-minute, (iii) 10-second,...

In this paper, we propose an efficient Monte Carlo implementation of a non-linear FBSDE as a system of interacting particles inspired by the idea of the branching diffusion method of McKean. It will be particularly useful to investigate large and complex systems, and hence it is a good...

We consider evaluation methods for payoffs with an inherent financial risk as encountered for instance for portfolios held by pension funds and insurance companies. Pricing such payoffs in a way consistent to market prices typically involves combining actuarial techniques with methods from...

We construct a uniquely detailed, comprehensive dataset of trader positions in U.S. energy futures markets. We find considerable changes in the make-up of the open interest between 2000 and 2010 and show that these changes impact asset pricing. Specifically, dynamic conditional correlations...

We hypothesize that individual investors treat trading as a fun and exciting gambling activity, which implies substitution between this activity and alternative gambling opportunities. To examine this hypothesis, we study the lottery jackpots and the trading of individual investors in Taiwan....

The large inflow of investment capital to commodity futures markets in the last decade has generated a heated debate about whether financialization distorts commodity prices. Rather than focusing on the opposing views concerning whether investment flows either did or did not cause a price...