| dc.description.abstract | Robust Spectral Methods for Solving Option Pricing Problems
by
Edson Pindza
PhD thesis, Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, Faculty of
Natural Sciences, University of the Western Cape
Ever since the invention of the classical Black-Scholes formula to price the financial
derivatives, a number of mathematical models have been proposed by numerous researchers
in this direction. Many of these models are in general very complex, thus
closed form analytical solutions are rarely obtainable. In view of this, we present a
class of efficient spectral methods to numerically solve several mathematical models of
pricing options. We begin with solving European options. Then we move to solve their
American counterparts which involve a free boundary and therefore normally difficult
to price by other conventional numerical methods. We obtain very promising results
for the above two types of options and therefore we extend this approach to solve
some more difficult problems for pricing options, viz., jump-diffusion models and local
volatility models. The numerical methods involve solving partial differential equations,
partial integro-differential equations and associated complementary problems which are
used to model the financial derivatives. In order to retain their exponential accuracy,
we discuss the necessary modification of the spectral methods. Finally, we present
several comparative numerical results showing the superiority of our spectral methods. | en_US |
