Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-2jdt9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-21T02:22:10.418Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Geometric Inequalities in Option Pricing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2025

Keith M. Ball
Affiliation:
University College London
Vitali Milman
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
Get access

Summary

This paper discusses various geometric inequalities in option pricing assuming that the underlying stock prices are governed by a joint geometric Brownian motion. In particular, inequalities of isoperimetric type are proved for different classes of derivative securities. Moreover, the paper discusses the option on the minimum of several assets and, among other things, proves a log-concavity property of its price.

1. Introduction The purpose of this paper is to prove various geometric inequalities in option pricing using familiar inequalities of the Brunn-Minkowski type in Gauss space. To begin with, recall that a European (American) call [putJ option is defined as the right to buy [sellJ one share of stock at a specified price on (or before) a specified date. The specified price is referred to as the exercise price and the terminal date of the contract is called the expiration date or maturity date. In fact, already the early paper [20J by Merton treats a variety of convexity properties of puts and calls, sometimes without any distributional assumptions on the underlying stock prices. Here, however, it will always be assumed that the price process X(t) = (X1 (t), …,Xm(t)), t ≥ 0, of the underlying risky assets X l, … , Xm is governed by a so called joint geometric Brownian motion. Furthermore, all options will be of European type and so, from now on, option will always mean option of European type.

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×