When is Time Continuous?
MIT Laboratory of Financial Engineering (LFE) Working Paper No. LFE-1033-98
51 Pages Posted: 2 Sep 1998
Date Written: August 3, 1998
Abstract
Continuous-time stochastic processes have become central to many disciplines, yet the fact that they are approximations to physically realizable phenomena is often overlooked. We quantify one aspect of the approximation errors of continuous-time models by investigating the replication errors that arise from delta hedging derivative securities in discrete time. We characterize the asymptotic distribution of these replication errors and their joint distribution with other assets as the number of discrete time periods increases. We introduce the notion of "temporal granularity" for continuous-time stochastic processes, which allows us to quantify the extent to which discrete-time implementations of continuous-time models can track the payoff of a derivative security. We show that granularity is a function of the contract specifications of the derivative security, and of the degree of market completeness. We derive closed form expressions for the granularity of geometric Brownian motion and of an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process for call and put options, and perform Monte Carlo simulations that illustrate the practical relevance of granularity.
JEL Classification: C22, G12, G13
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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