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...

The main goal of this paper is to better understand the behavior of credit spreads in the past and the potential risk of unexpected future credit spread changes. One important consideration to note regarding credit spreads is the fact that bond spreads contain a liquidity premium, which...

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...

We estimate a general microstructure model of the transitory and permanent impact of order flow on stock prices. Jumps are detected in both the transaction price (observation equation) and fundamental value (state equation). The model's parameters and variances are updated in real time. Prices...

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...

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...