Approximations to the Lévy LIBOR Model

In this thesis, we study the LIBOR Market Model and the Lévy-LIBOR. We first look at the construction of LIBOR Market Model (LMM) and address the major problems associated with specifically the drift component of LMM. Due to the complexity of the drift for LMM, the Monte Carlo method seems to be the ideal tool to use. However, the Monte Carlo method is time consuming and therefore an expensive tool to use. To improve on the process we look beyond the dynamics of the lognormal distribution, where Brownian motion (the only Lévy process with continuous paths), is the driving process and apply other Lévy processes with jumps as the driving process in the dynamics of LIBOR. The resulting process is called Lévy LIBOR Model constructed in the framework of Eberlein and Özkan (2005). The Lévy LIBOR model is a very flexible and a general process to use but has a complicated drift part in the terminal measure. The complicated drift term has random terms in the drift part as a result of change of measure. We employ Picard approximation and cumulant expansions in the resulting drift component to make the processes tractable in the framework of Papapantoleon and Skovmand (2010).

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Al-Hassan, Hassana

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Becker, Ronald
• Mataramvura, Sure

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22029

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/22029