Weiping Li

This paper investigates how violations of the assumption that jumps are identically and independently distributed (IID) affect option prices. We characterize several types of IID jumps violations including jumps with time-varying means, time-varying variances, and time-varying autocorrelations, and analyze the combined effect of these violations on option prices. These IID violations affect option prices in different ways. Different effects of IID violations can either offset each other to eliminate the effect of isolated IID violations or can act as leverages increasing the magnitude of mispricing created by a single violation of the IID assumption. Our investigation is performed inside a new framework for the pricing of options that relaxes the assumption that jumps are IID. We derive three families of jump-diffusion option pricing formulae with non-IID jumps. Numerically and empirically, we show that the non-IID models can improve the BSM on the S&P 500 options for both in-samples and out-of-the-samples data in terms of SSE, AE and ARE.

In this paper, we introduce the MSCI China A-shares index (MCASI) and analyze MCASI’s properties. From the perspective of index investment, we found that MCASI’s investor sentiments, both overnight sentiment and BW sentiment, provide significant predictability for future MCASI returns, supported by the in-sample and out-of-sample results. From the perspective of sector investment, we show that the sector portfolio of “information transfer, software and information technology services” performs the best among the 10 sector portfolios. In addition, seven approaches of the optimal portfolio in ten sectors are examined, and the results suggest that the classic Markowitz portfolio approach is recommended. Our empirical analysis is helpful for domestic and foreign investors seeking to form investment strategies for MSCI China A-shares.

We model a corporation dividend as an exchange option on stochastic cash flow and capital budge. Then we solve optimal dividend policy problem completely based on the dividend model under the assumption that the cash reservoir of a corporation follows a mean reverting process from empirical evidence and economic arguments. Our optimal dividend controls depend on explicitly with the cash flow and the capital budget of the corporation, and maximizes the HARA utility performance. We specify the unique optimal dividend control for the cash flow and the capital budge. Multiplicity or absence of optimal dividend policies are given. The stock price of the corporation is studied in terms of our stochastic dividend model. We find an explicit relation among the volatility of the stock price, the volatility of the cash flow and the volatility of the capital budget. The ex-dividend stock price is positively proportional to the stochastic cash flow and the probability of the dividend delta with respect to the cash flow, and negatively proportional to the capital budget and the probability of the dividend delta with respect to the capital budget. Hence, our approach provides another passage through which countercyclical volatility of the stock price can arise from the countercyclical cash flow and capital budget directly.

In this paper, we define and analyze the sentiment‐styled index for the CSI 300 index futures in the Chinese futures market. Our sentiment‐styled index for the CSI 300 index futures from April 16, 2010 to April 30, 2019 is constructed by the first and second principal component analyses, rather than only by the first principal component analysis used in the Baker and Wurgler (Journal of Finance 61(4): 1645–1680, 2006) method. The sentiment‐styled index explains 78.38% of the sample variance. The vector error correction model is adapted to study the dynamics of cointegration of the sentiment‐styled index and the logarithmic futures price. We use the GARCH‐DCC model to illustrate the spillover effect between the sentiment‐styled index and the Chinese futures market. We show that this investor sentiment‐styled index does have the price discovery from the Granger causality and common factor weights and the hedging function from the Baba–Engle–Kraft–Kroner model empirically; furthermore, we use the curvature term of the sentiment‐styled index to determine the multiple unit roots. More empirical results for the sentiment‐styled index of the Chinese stock market, the sentiment‐styled index of the CSI 300 index futures, and the return of the CSI 300 index futures market are studied in this paper.

We consider a system where the asset values of firms are correlated with the default thresholds. We first evaluate the probability of default of a single firm under the correlated assets assumptions. This extends Merton’s probability of default of a single firm under the independent asset values assumption. At any time, the distance-to-default for a single firm is derived in the system, and this distance-to-default should provide a different measure for credit rating with the correlated asset values into consideration. Then we derive a closed formula for the joint default probability and a general closed formula for the default correlation via the correlated multivariate process of the first-passage-time default correlation model. Our structural model encodes the sensitivities of default correlations with respect to the underlying correlation among firms’ asset values. We propose the disparate credit risk management from our result in contrast to the commonly used risk measurement methods considering default correlations into consideration.