0000000000709896
AUTHOR
Michaela Beinert
Jump-diffusion models of German stock returns
This paper discusses the statistical properties of jump-diffusion processes and reports on parameter estimates for the DAX stock index and 48 German stocks with traded options. It is found that a Poisson-type jump-diffusion process can explain the high levels of kurtosis and skewness of observed return distributions of German stocks. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the return dynamics of the DAX include a statistically significant jump component except for a few sample subperiods. This finding is seen to be inconsistent with asset pricing models assuming that the jump component of the stock's return is unsystematic and diversifiable in the market portfolio.
Impact of Stock Price Jumps on Option Values
Many empirical papers document the fact that the distribution of stock returns exhibits fatter tails than would be expected from a normal distribution. This might explain some of the pricing biases of the Black/Scholes model, which is] based on a normal return distribution. Given this result, alternative option pricing models should be based on one of the following three classes of return models: (1) a stationary process, such as a paretian stable or a student’s t-distribution, (2) a mixture of stationary distributions, such as two normal distributions with different means or variances, or a mixture of a diflusion and a pure jump process, or (3) a distribution such as a normal distribution …