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On the value of being American

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  • David Hobson
  • Anthony Neuberger

Abstract

The virtue of an American option is that it can be exercised at any time. This right is particularly valuable when there is model uncertainty. Yet almost all the extensive literature on American options assumes away model uncertainty. This paper quantifies the potential value of this flexibility by identifying the supremum on the price of an American option when no model is imposed on the data, but rather any model is required to be consistent with a family of European call prices. The bound is enforced by a hedging strategy involving these call options which is robust to model error.

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  • David Hobson & Anthony Neuberger, 2016. "On the value of being American," Papers 1604.02269, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1604.02269
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. David Hobson & Peter Laurence & Tai-Ho Wang, 2005. "Static-arbitrage upper bounds for the prices of basket options," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(4), pages 329-342.
    2. Peter Carr & Roger Lee, 2010. "Hedging variance options on continuous semimartingales," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 179-207, April.
    3. David G. Hobson, 1998. "Robust hedging of the lookback option," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 2(4), pages 329-347.
    4. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:3:p:1165-1190 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. 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.
    6. Alexander Cox & Jan Obłój, 2011. "Robust pricing and hedging of double no-touch options," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 573-605, September.
    7. Mathias Beiglbock & Pierre Henry-Labord`ere & Friedrich Penkner, 2011. "Model-independent Bounds for Option Prices: A Mass Transport Approach," Papers 1106.5929, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2013.
    8. Haydyn Brown & David Hobson & L. C. G. Rogers, 2001. "Robust Hedging of Barrier Options," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(3), pages 285-314, July.
    9. Mark H. A. Davis & David G. Hobson, 2007. "The Range Of Traded Option Prices," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(1), pages 1-14, January.
    10. Leif Andersen & Mark Broadie, 2004. "Primal-Dual Simulation Algorithm for Pricing Multidimensional American Options," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(9), pages 1222-1234, September.
    11. David Hobson & Martin Klimmek, 2012. "Model-independent hedging strategies for variance swaps," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 611-649, October.
    12. Carr, Peter & Madan, Dilip B., 2005. "A note on sufficient conditions for no arbitrage," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 125-130, September.
    13. Bruno Bouchard & Marcel Nutz, 2013. "Arbitrage and duality in nondominated discrete-time models," Papers 1305.6008, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2015.
    14. Mathias Beiglböck & Pierre Henry-Labordère & Friedrich Penkner, 2013. "Model-independent bounds for option prices—a mass transport approach," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 477-501, July.
    15. Harrison, J. Michael & Kreps, David M., 1979. "Martingales and arbitrage in multiperiod securities markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 381-408, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Anna Aksamit & Shuoqing Deng & Jan Obl'oj & Xiaolu Tan, 2016. "Robust pricing--hedging duality for American options in discrete time financial markets," Papers 1604.05517, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2017.
    2. Erhan Bayraktar & Zhou Zhou, 2017. "Super-Hedging American Options With Semi-Static Trading Strategies Under Model Uncertainty," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 20(06), pages 1-10, September.
    3. Cox, Alexander M.G. & Kinsley, Sam M., 2019. "Discretisation and duality of optimal Skorokhod embedding problems," Stochastic Processes and their Applications, Elsevier, vol. 129(7), pages 2376-2405.

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