Pricing and hedging of long-term interest rate sensitive products require to extrapolate the term structure beyond observable maturities. For the resulting limiting term structure we show two results by postulating no arbitrage in a bond market with infinitely increasing maturities: long...

We provide three characterizations of the minimal martingale measure P associated to a given d- dimensional semimartingale X. In each case, P is shown to be the unique solution of an optimization problem where one minimizes a certain functional over a suitable class of signed local martingale...

Easley / Kiefer / O'Hara / Paperman (1996) (EKOP) have proposed an empirical methodology that allows to estimate the probability of informed trading and that has subsequently been used to address a wide range of issues in market microstructure. The data needed for estimation is the number of...

The recent introduction of the realized variance measure defined as the sum of the squared intra-daily returns stamped on some high frequency basis has spurred the research in the field of volatility modeling and forecasting into new directions. First, the realized variance is a much better...

Trades in DAX index options with identical maturities cluster around particular classes of strike prices. For example, options with strikes ending on 50 are less traded than options with strikes ending on 00. Clustering is higher when options with close strike prices are good substitutes. The...

In this paper we propose and estimate an econometric model for the distribution of trading activity across options written on the DAX index. The model is based on the observation that in this market options with strike prices ending on 000, 200, 400, 600 and 800 (the class of 200-strike options)...

Using data from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange we analyze price formation and liquidity in a non-anonymous environment with similarities to the floor of the NYSE. Our main hypothesis is that the non-anonymity allows the specialist to assess the probability that a trader trades on the basis of...

Turbo-Certificates are one of the most popular structured equity products for private investors in Germany. They can be regarded as special forms of barrier options. The relation between the barrier level and the strike price is especially important for the design of these products. By using a...

We analyze price discovery in floor-based and electronic exchanges using data from the German stock market. We find that both markets contribute to price discovery. There is bidirectional Granger causality, and prices from both markets adjust to deviations from the long-run equilibrium. We use...

In this paper, we consider the net loss of a life insurance company issuing identical equity-linked pure endowment contracts in the case of periodic premiums. Under this construction, financial risks as well as the mortality risk are included. Based on Møller (1998), we particularly investigate...