IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/quantf/v14y2014i10p1839-1855.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Comparison of methods to estimate option implied risk-neutral densities

Author

Listed:
  • Wan-Ni Lai

Abstract

This paper is a comparison study of non-parametric techniques used to estimate risk-neutral densities from option prices. Cross-sectional option prices are first generated using Monte Carlo simulation. Using these simulated options data, risk-neutral densities of the underlying asset are estimated using three different non-parametric methods. The performances of these non-parametric estimation methods are then evaluated by comparing the estimated densities with the theoretical density. Unlike previous comparison studies that use traded options data without knowing the true risk-neutral densities, this study uses simulated option data with known data-generating processes and their corresponding risk-neutral densities, hence giving a real evaluation of the non-parametric estimation methods. This study finds that the kernel regression method yields the best performance, followed by the spline interpolation method and the neural network models.

Suggested Citation

  • Wan-Ni Lai, 2014. "Comparison of methods to estimate option implied risk-neutral densities," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(10), pages 1839-1855, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:quantf:v:14:y:2014:i:10:p:1839-1855
    DOI: 10.1080/14697688.2011.606823
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14697688.2011.606823
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/14697688.2011.606823?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Garcia, Rene & Luger, Richard & Renault, Eric, 2003. "Empirical assessment of an intertemporal option pricing model with latent variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1-2), pages 49-83.
    2. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine & Lo, Andrew W., 2000. "Nonparametric risk management and implied risk aversion," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 9-51.
    3. Buchen, Peter W. & Kelly, Michael, 1996. "The Maximum Entropy Distribution of an Asset Inferred from Option Prices," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(1), pages 143-159, March.
    4. Hutchinson, James M & Lo, Andrew W & Poggio, Tomaso, 1994. "A Nonparametric Approach to Pricing and Hedging Derivative Securities via Learning Networks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(3), pages 851-889, July.
    5. Coutant, Sophie & Jondeau, Eric & Rockinger, Michael, 1998. "Reading Interest Rate and Bond Futures Options' Smiles Around the 1997 French Snap Election," CEPR Discussion Papers 2010, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Bakshi, Gurdip & Cao, Charles & Chen, Zhiwu, 1997. "Empirical Performance of Alternative Option Pricing Models," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(5), pages 2003-2049, December.
    7. Jackwerth, Jens Carsten, 2000. "Recovering Risk Aversion from Option Prices and Realized Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 13(2), pages 433-451.
    8. Robert C. Merton, 2005. "Theory of rational option pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 8, pages 229-288, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    9. Michael Rockinger & S. Coutant & Eric Jondeau, 1998. "Reading Interest Rate and Bond Futures Options' Smiles: How PIBOR and National Operators Appreciated the 1997 French Snap Election," Working Papers hal-00601499, HAL.
    10. Garcia, Rene & Gencay, Ramazan, 2000. "Pricing and hedging derivative securities with neural networks and a homogeneity hint," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 93-115.
    11. Patrick Navatte & Christophe Villa, 2000. "The information content of implied volatility, skewness and kurtosis: empirical evidence from long‐term CAC 40 options," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 6(1), pages 41-56, March.
    12. Heston, Steven L, 1993. "A Closed-Form Solution for Options with Stochastic Volatility with Applications to Bond and Currency Options," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(2), pages 327-343.
    13. Campa, Jose M. & Chang, P. H. Kevin & Reider, Robert L., 1998. "Implied exchange rate distributions: evidence from OTC option markets1," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 117-160, February.
    14. Stutzer, Michael, 1996. "A Simple Nonparametric Approach to Derivative Security Valuation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(5), pages 1633-1652, December.
    15. Bliss, Robert R. & Panigirtzoglou, Nikolaos, 2002. "Testing the stability of implied probability density functions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(2-3), pages 381-422, March.
    16. Breeden, Douglas T & Litzenberger, Robert H, 1978. "Prices of State-contingent Claims Implicit in Option Prices," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(4), pages 621-651, October.
    17. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1978. "Asset Prices in an Exchange Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(6), pages 1429-1445, November.
    18. Jackwerth, Jens Carsten, 1999. "Option Implied Risk-Neutral Distributions and Implied Binomial Trees: A Literature Review," MPRA Paper 11634, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Black, Fischer & Scholes, Myron S, 1973. "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 637-654, May-June.
    20. Rubinstein, Mark, 1994. "Implied Binomial Trees," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(3), pages 771-818, July.
    21. Mark Rubinstein., 1994. "Implied Binomial Trees," Research Program in Finance Working Papers RPF-232, University of California at Berkeley.
    22. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:2:p:499-547 is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Xiaoquan Liu, 2007. "Bid-ask spread, strike prices and risk-neutral densities," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(11), pages 887-900.
    24. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:1:p:407-446 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Johannes Ruf & Weiguan Wang, 2019. "Neural networks for option pricing and hedging: a literature review," Papers 1911.05620, arXiv.org, revised May 2020.
    2. Cortés, Lina M. & Mora-Valencia, Andrés & Perote, Javier, 2020. "Retrieving the implicit risk neutral density of WTI options with a semi-nonparametric approach," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    3. Shan Lu, 2019. "Monte Carlo analysis of methods for extracting risk‐neutral densities with affine jump diffusions," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(12), pages 1587-1612, December.
    4. Lina M. Cortés & Javier Perote & Andrés Mora-Valencia, 2017. "Implicit probability distribution for WTI options: The Black Scholes vs. the semi-nonparametric approach," Documentos de Trabajo de Valor Público 15923, Universidad EAFIT.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christoffersen, Peter & Jacobs, Kris & Chang, Bo Young, 2013. "Forecasting with Option-Implied Information," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 581-656, Elsevier.
    2. René Garcia & Eric Ghysels & Eric Renault, 2004. "The Econometrics of Option Pricing," CIRANO Working Papers 2004s-04, CIRANO.
    3. Bondarenko, Oleg, 2003. "Estimation of risk-neutral densities using positive convolution approximation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1-2), pages 85-112.
    4. Rompolis, Leonidas S., 2010. "Retrieving risk neutral densities from European option prices based on the principle of maximum entropy," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 918-937, December.
    5. Arindam Kundu & Sumit Kumar & Nutan Kumar Tomar, 2019. "Option Implied Risk-Neutral Density Estimation: A Robust and Flexible Method," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 54(2), pages 705-728, August.
    6. Marian Micu, 2005. "Extracting expectations from currency option prices: a comparison of methods," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 226, Society for Computational Economics.
    7. René Garcia & Richard Luger & Eric Renault, 2000. "Asymmetric Smiles, Leverage Effects and Structural Parameters," Working Papers 2000-57, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    8. Jurczenko, Emmanuel & Maillet, Bertrand & Negrea, Bogdan, 2002. "Revisited multi-moment approximate option pricing models: a general comparison (Part 1)," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24950, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Monteiro, Ana Margarida & Tutuncu, Reha H. & Vicente, Luis N., 2008. "Recovering risk-neutral probability density functions from options prices using cubic splines and ensuring nonnegativity," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 187(2), pages 525-542, June.
    10. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    11. Coutant, Sophie & Jondeau, Eric & Rockinger, Michael, 2001. "Reading PIBOR futures options smiles: The 1997 snap election," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(11), pages 1957-1987, November.
    12. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine & Wang, Yubo & Yared, Francis, 2001. "Do option markets correctly price the probabilities of movement of the underlying asset?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 67-110, May.
    13. Liao, Wen Ju & Sung, Hao-Chang, 2020. "Implied risk aversion and pricing kernel in the FTSE 100 index," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    14. Bogdan Negrea & Bertrand Maillet & Emmanuel Jurczenko, 2002. "Revisited Multi-moment Approximate Option," FMG Discussion Papers dp430, Financial Markets Group.
    15. Horatio Cuesdeanu & Jens Carsten Jackwerth, 2018. "The pricing kernel puzzle: survey and outlook," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 289-329, August.
    16. Christoffersen, Peter & Heston, Steven & Jacobs, Kris, 2010. "Option Anomalies and the Pricing Kernel," Working Papers 11-17, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Weiss Center.
    17. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine & Lo, Andrew W., 2000. "Nonparametric risk management and implied risk aversion," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 9-51.
    18. René Garcia & Richard Luger & Éric Renault, 2005. "Viewpoint: Option prices, preferences, and state variables," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(1), pages 1-27, February.
    19. repec:wyi:journl:002108 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Grith, Maria & Härdle, Wolfgang Karl & Schienle, Melanie, 2010. "Nonparametric estimation of risk-neutral densities," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2010-021, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    21. Garcia, Rene & Luger, Richard & Renault, Eric, 2003. "Empirical assessment of an intertemporal option pricing model with latent variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1-2), pages 49-83.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:quantf:v:14:y:2014:i:10:p:1839-1855. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RQUF20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.