We derive the statistical properties of the SNP densities of Gallant and Nychka (1987). Weshow that these densities, which are always positive, are more flexible than truncated Gram-Charlier expansions with positivity restrictions. We use the SNP densities for financialderivatives valuation. We...

Option prices are a valuable source of information concerning risk assessments from investors about future financial payoffs. The information is summarized in the state price densities (SPD), the continuous counterpart (normalized by a constant) from Arrow-Debreu security prices. Under no...

This paper analyzes empirical market utility functions and pricing kernelsderived from the DAX and DAX option data for three market regimes. Aconsistent parametric framework of stochastic volatility is used. All empiricalmarket utility functions show a region of risk proclivity that is...

In January 2005 the EU-wide CO2 emissions trading system (EU-ETS) has formally entered into operation.Within the new trading system, the right to emit a particular amount of CO2 becomes a tradable commodity - called EU Allowances (EUAs) - and affected companies, traders and investors will face...

We present solutions to some discounted optimal stopping problems for the maximum process in a model driven by a Brownian motion and a compound Poisson process with exponential jumps. The method of proof is based on reducing the initial problems to integro-differential free-boundary problems...

We present a solution to some discounted optimal stopping problem for the maximum of a geometric Brownian motion on a finite time interval. The method of proof is based on reducing the initial optimal stopping problem with the continuation region determined by an increasing continuous boundary...

Universal life policies are the most popular insurance contract design in theUnited States. They have either a level death benefit paying a fixed faceamount, or an increasing death benefit, which additionally pays the availablecash value, and both types include the option to switch from one to...

The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of capital and risk transfer instruments on diversification and insolvency risk in a parent-subsidiary relationship. To better assess the effects, we compare this setting to the case of a holding company and an integrated financial group. In the...

The calibration of financial models has become rather important topic in recent years mainly because of the need to price increasingly complex options in a consistent way. The choice of the underlying model is crucial for the good performance of any calibration procedure. Recent empirical...

We investigate the problem of calibrating an exponential Lévy model based on market prices of vanilla options. We show that this inverse problem is in general severely ill-posed and we derive exact minimax rates of convergence. The estimation procedure we propose is based on the explicit...