Numerical Methods for European Options in the Merton Jump Model
Summary
The document introduces the Merton jump-diffusion model for an underlying asset and gives a partial integro-differential equation for pricing a contingent claim. The model combines continuous price variation driven by Brownian motion with discrete jumps whose arrivals follow a Poisson process. It assumes the diffusion and jump processes are independent, and identifies parameters including drift, volatility, and jump intensity.
The author asks for methods to price European options under this model. The response points to a benchmarking study that compares about fifteen numerical methods across six option-pricing problems, including the Merton model. The methods are grouped into Monte Carlo, Fourier, finite-difference, and radial-basis-function approaches, offering a useful map of numerical techniques to explore. The document itself does not explain how to implement or compare the methods, nor does it report their relative accuracy or speed for the Merton case. The cited benchmark is therefore a starting point for further study rather than a complete numerical recipe.
Key ideas
- The Merton model combines continuous diffusion with random jumps arriving according to a Poisson process.
- The pricing equation includes both differential terms and an integral over possible jump outcomes.
- Monte Carlo, Fourier, finite-difference, and radial-basis-function methods are identified as numerical approach families.
- A benchmark study includes the Merton model but this document does not give method-specific results or implementation guidance.
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Full text
# Numerical Methods for Merton Model
# Numerical Methods for Merton Model
The stochastic differential equation for an underlying with jumps in Merton model is: $$d{{S}_{t}}=\mu \,{{S}_{t}}dt+\sigma \,{{S}_{t}}\,d{{W}_{t}}^{P}+(J-1){{S}_{t}}d{{q}_{t}}$$ where
$t \quad\,\,\, \quad$ = time
$S \quad\, \quad$ = Underlying stock price
$\mu\,\,\quad\quad$ = Drift rate
$\sigma\quad\,\,\quad$ = Volatility
$dW\,\,\quad$ = Increment of Gauss-Wiener process
$dq\quad\quad$ = Poisson process
$J -1 \,\,\,\,\,$= Impulse function producing a jump from $S$ to $S\lambda$
$K\quad\quad$ = $E(\lambda -1)$ , expected relative jump size
and
define a Poisson process $dq_t$ as follows:
$$d{{q}_{t}}=\left\{ \begin{align} & 0\,\,\,\,\,\,,\,\,\,\,with\,probability\,\,1-\lambda (t)dt\, \\ & 1\,\,\,\,\,,\,\,\,\,with\,probability\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\lambda (t)dt\, \\ \end{align} \right.$$
where $\lambda$ = Poisson arrival intensity
We assume that Gauss-Wiener process and jumps are independent. Based on the SDE the resulting $PIDE$ for a contingent claim $V(S,t)$ that depends on $S$ is given by (Merton 1976): \begin{equation} \frac{\partial V}{\partial t}+(r-K \lambda )S\frac{\partial V}{\partial S}+\frac{1}{2}{{\sigma }^{2}}{{S}^{2}}\frac{{{\partial }^{2}}V}{\partial {{S}^{2}}}-(r+\lambda )V+\lambda \,\int_{0}^{\infty }{g(J)V(J{{S}_{t}},t)\,}dJ=0 \end{equation} now I want to solve this $PIDE$ with some numerical methods like "Monte Carlo" , "Binomial Tree " etc. in order to pricing European Option. Would anybody give or teach me some useful and instructive note or some references that I can learn more than 3 numerical methods for Pricing European Options under Merton model ?
I appreciate any help.
## Answer by millovanovic (score 1, accepted)
https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/31359
You should take a look at the BENCHOP project. There we benchmarked around 15 different numerical methods against 6 option pricing problems. One of the problems was the Merton model. The methods were split into 4 families: Monte Carlo, Fourier, Finite Difference, and Radial Basis Function methods.
This is the paper containing the results: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207160.2015.1072172, and here is the project page where you can see the implementational details for each of the methods: http://www.it.uu.se/research/project/compfin/benchop.
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BENCHOP – The BENCHmarking project in option pricing
Lina von Sydow, Lars Josef Höök, Elisabeth Larsson, Erik Lindström, Slobodan Milovanović, Jonas Persson, Victor Shcherbakov, Yuri Shpolyanskiy, Samuel Sirén, Jari Toivanen, Johan Waldén, Magnus Wiktorsson, Jeremy Levesley, Juxi Li, Cornelis W. Oosterlee, Maria J. Ruijter, Alexander Toropov, and Yangzhang Zhao
International Journal Of Computer Mathematics Vol. 92 , Iss. 12,2015
```Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)
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