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This paper provides a fuller characterization of the analytical upper bounds for American options than has been available to date. We establish properties required of analytical upper bounds without any direct reliance on the exercise boundary. A class of generalized European claims on the same underlying asset is then proposed as upper bounds. This set contains the existing closed form bounds of Margrabe, (1978) and Chen and Yeh (2002) as special cases and allows randomization of the maturity payoff. Owing to the European nature of the bounds, across-strike arbitrage conditions on option prices seem to carry over to the bounds. Among other things, European option spreads may be viewed as ratio positions on the early exercise option. To tighten the upper bound, we propose a quasi-bound that holds as an upper bound for most situations of interest and seems to offer considerable improvement over the currently available closed form bounds. As an approximation, the discounted value of Chen and Yeh's (2002) bound holds some promise. We also discuss implications for parametric and nonparametric empirical option pricing. Sample option quotes for the European (XEO) and the American (OEX) options on the S&P 100 Index appear well behaved with respect to the upper bound properties but the bid–ask spreads are too wide to permit a synthetic short position in the early exercise option.

This research applies a static hedging portfolio method derived from Derman, Ergener, and Kani (1995) (henceforth Derman's SHP method) and a new SHP method with European cash-or-nothing binary options developed by Chung, Shih, and Tsai (2013) to price European continuous double barrier (ECDB) options and the rebates of the ECDB options. Our numerical results indicate that the new SHP method outperforms Derman's SHP method in terms of efficiency and effectiveness under all circumstances.

The depth and breadth of the market for contingent claims, including exotic options, has expanded dramatically. Regulators have expressed concern regarding the risks of exotics to the financial system, due to the difficulty of hedging these instruments. Recent literature focuses on the difficulties in hedging exotic options, e.g., liquidity risk and other violations of the standard Black‐Scholes model. This article provides insight into hedging problems associated with exotic options: 1) hedging in discrete versus continuous time, 2) transaction costs, 3) stochastic volatility, and 4) non‐constant correlation. The author applies simulation analysis of these problems to a variety of exotics, including Asian options, barrier options, look‐back options, and quanto options.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the cross-sectional predictive power and the information content of volatility smirks for future stock returns using single stock options.

The study uses Fama-Macbeth procedure and portfolio approach to investigate the predictability and informativeness in a setup when options settlement style is changed from American to European.

The study reports that the volatility smirk of European style options, unlike American style options, predict the underlying cross-sectional equity returns. Firms with steepest volatility smirk underperform firms with flatter volatility smirks, by an average of 3.28 and 4.01 per cent annually for American and European options, respectively. The results are robust to the control of idiosyncratic and systematic risk factors.

The results confirm that a trader with negative information prefers to trade out-of-the-money put options. The more pronounced results of European options designate the trader’s preference to less risky European style stock options. Results are robust and signify the delay of equity market in incorporating information impounded in the volatility smirk.

Very few studies examine smirk and returns relationship and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study exists that examine the unique case of change in options style and its role in affecting relationship between smirk and future returns.

The executive stock option (ESO) valuation model developed in this research amends the popular exchange traded option pricing models such as Black and Scholes (1973), Whaley (1981), and Cox, Ross, and Rubinstein (1979) to include economic features of the ESO contract that previously have been ignored. One of these features is the non‐transferability of the ESO, which creates a situation where the ESO might be exercised when an otherwise identical exchange traded option would not. Another feature is the hybrid nature of the ESO; it is not solely either an American option or a European option. The results of the comparative statics indicate that the impact of the non‐transferability of the ESO value is significant, whereas the hybrid feature of the ESO results in values that are very similar to American option values. The economic implication is that if an American or European option model is used to value ESO's, the probability is very high that a wealth transfer between management and shareholders will occur.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new scheme of public–private partnership (PPP) within the framework of motorways of the sea (MoS) similar to that of an equity joint venture along with a methodology for valuing risk transfers arising from options embedded in the clauses included in such agreement.

The architecture of the proposed PPP is an adaptation to the scope of a MoS of collaborative schemes commonly used in industry such as equity joint ventures. The methodology for valuing options involved making use of a valuation tree of optimal cashflows along with algorithm designs from the field of financial and real options.

The proposed structure of public–private equity joint venture (PPEJV) increases the stability of private–public collaboration as compared with standard PPPs, so as to achieve the desired modal shift. The analyzed case study shows how the methodology provides valuable numerical information for both negotiating partners and policy makers.

This study provides a quantitative tool for policy makers to redefine the role that public agents and public funds should play in a future sustainable mobility model.

The originality of the authors’ contribution to the field of PPPs in transport is triple. First, there is no precedent in the literature on PPPs of an architecture similar to that of the proposed PPEJV. Second, unlike the usual practice in the valuation of financial or real options, no prior structure is assumed for modelling the behaviour of cashflows. Third, the type of options addressed is not usual neither in the real options literature in general nor in the valuation of guarantee mechanisms included in PPPs in particular.

Steel price uncertainty exposes pipeline projects that are inherently capital intensive to the risk of cost overruns. The current study proposes a hedging methodology for tackling steel pipeline price risk by deploying Asian option contracts that address the shortcomings of current risk mitigation strategies.

A stepwise methodology is introduced, which uses a closed-form formula as an Asian option valuation method for calculating this total expenditure. The scenario analysis of three price trends examines whether or not the approach is beneficial to users. The sensitivity analysis then has been conducted using the financial option Greeks to assess the effects of changes in volatility in the total price of the option contracts. The total price of the Asian options was then compared with those of the European and American options.

The results demonstrate that the Asian option expenditure was about 1.87% of the total cost of the case study project. The scenario analysis revealed that, except for when the price followed a continuous downward pattern, the use of this type of financial instrument is a practical approach for steel pipeline price risk management.

This approach is founded on a well-established financial options theory and elucidates how pipeline project participants can deploy Asian option contracts to safeguard against steel price fluctuations in practice.

Although the literature exists about the theory and application of financial derivative instruments for risk management in other sectors, their application to the construction industry is infrequent. In the proposed methodology, all participants involved in fixed price pipeline projects readily surmount the risk of exposure to material price fluctuations.