This paper proposes a new explanation for the smile and skewness effects in implied volatilities. Starting from a microeconomic equilibrium approach, we develop a diffusion model for stock prices explicitly incorporating the technical demand induced by hedging strategies. This leads to a...

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...

The fluctuation of stock prices is modelled as a sequence of temporary equilibria on a financial market with different types of agents. We summarize joint work with M. Schweizer on the class of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes in a random environment which appears in the diffusion limit. Moreover,...

We develop a new approach to pricing and hedging contingent claims in incomplete markets. Mimicking as closely as possible in an incomplete markets framework the no--arbitrage arguments that have been developed in complete markets leads us to defining the concept of pseudo--arbitrage. Building...

The Paper reports a basic Experiment on the option pricing approach. Each trader with an increasing utility for money values the option with his arbitrage free price, which is independent of the probability of the stock movement. The experimental data show that the traiders learn to exploit more...

This paper addresses the statistical properties of time series driven by rational bubbles a la Blanchard and Watson (1982). Using insights on the behavior of multiplicative stochastic processes, we demonstrate that the tails of the unconditional distribution emerging from such bubble processes...

In this survey we discuss models with level-dependent and stochastic volatility from the viewpoint of erivative asset analysis. Both classes of models are generalisations of the classical Black-Scholes model; they have been developed in an effort to build models that are flexible enough to cope...

Multi-fractal processes have been proposed as a new formalism for modeling the time series of returns in finance. The major attraction of these processes is their capability of generating various degrees of long-memory in different powers of returns - a feature that has been found to...

This paper reports an option pricing experiment on the binomial model, which has been conducted with professional traders of financial assets. The experimental results are compared to a corresponding experiment with students. The data show that professional traders achieve lower arbitrage...

This paper constructs a model for the evolution of a risky security that is consistent with a set of observed call option prices. It explicitly treats the fact that only a discrete data set can be observed in practice. The framework is general and allows for state dependent volatility and jumps....