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Mandelbrot and the Smile

Year:    2009

Author:    Lehnert, Thorsten

Credit and Capital Markets – Kredit und Kapital, Vol. 42 (2009), Iss. 1 : pp. 125–144

Abstract

Mandelbrot and the Smile

It is a well-documented empirical fact that index option prices systematically differ from Black-Scholes prices. However, previous research provides inconclusive results whether the observed volatility smile could be explained by a discretetime dynamic model of stock returns with skewed, leptokurtic innovations. The improvements in pricing errors are particularly pronounced for out-of-the money put options, while the models partly underperform a Gaussian alternative for near-the-money options. Motivated by theses empirical evidence, I develop a new GARCH option-pricing model with a more flexible innovation structure. In an application of the model to DAX index options, I test the relative performance of the approach against a standard nested GARCH specification and the well-known practitioners Black-Scholes model. I show that the performance of the truncated Lévy GARCH option pricing model is superior to existing approaches. (JEL G12)

Journal Article Details

Publisher Name:    Global Science Press

Language:    English

DOI:    https://doi.org/10.3790/kuk.42.1.125

Credit and Capital Markets – Kredit und Kapital, Vol. 42 (2009), Iss. 1 : pp. 125–144

Published online:    2009-04

AMS Subject Headings:    Duncker & Humblot

Copyright:    COPYRIGHT: © Global Science Press

Pages:    20

Author Details

Lehnert, Thorsten