Modelling the implied volatility surface: Does market efficiency matter? [An article from: International Review of Financial Analysis]

This digital document is a journal article from International Review of Financial Analysis, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
We analyze the volatility surface vs. moneyness and time-to-expiration implied by MIBO options written on the MIB30, the most important Italian stock index. We specify and fit a number of models of the implied volatility surface and find that it has a rich and interesting structure that strongly departs from a constant volatility, Black-Scholes benchmark. This result is robust to alternative econometric approaches, including generalized least squares approaches that take into account both the panel structure of the data and the likely presence of heteroskedasticity and serial correlation in the random disturbances. Finally we show that the degree of pricing efficiency of this options market can strongly condition the results of the econometric analysis and therefore our understanding of the pricing mechanism underlying observed MIBO option prices. Applications to value-at-risk and portfolio choice calculations illustrate the importance of using arbitrage-free data only.