An analytical approach to the pricing of an exchange option with default risk under a stochastic volatility model

Abstract

The exchange option, which has two correlated underlying assets, is one of the most popular exotic options in the over-the-counter markets. This paper studies the valuation of exchange options with default risk of option issuer, where default is allowed only at maturity. Moreover, we consider three underlying assets with stochastic volatilities and assume that fast mean-reverting processes determine the stochastic volatilities. Based on the partial differential equation approach, we derive the analytical pricing formula of the exchange option price with default risk using the asymptotic expansion. To verify the accuracy and efficiency of our pricing formula, we compare the results by our pricing formula with those by Monte Carlo simulation, which is considered a benchmark. In addition, we provide several graphs to illustrate the properties of the option for significant parameters.