The Least-Squares Monte Carlo (LSM) algorithm of Longstaff and Schwartz (2001) prices American options with a regression-based early-exercise strategy. This paper analyzes LSM estimator variance to identify two sources: sampling design and stopping time estimation. We examine the effect of...

This paper proposes a new method for pricing American options that uses importance sampling to reduce estimator bias and variance in simulation-and-regression based methods. Our suggested method uses regressions under the importance measure directly, instead of under the nominal measure as is...

Recently it was shown that the estimated American call prices obtained with regression and simulation based methods can be significantly improved on by using put-call symmetry. This paper extends these results and demonstrates that it is also possible to significantly reduce the variance of the...