Investigating the Market Price of Volatility Risk for Options in a Regime-Switching Market

Abstract

To bridge the gap between the output of theoretical option pricing models and observed option prices on exchanges, it is necessary to price the volatility risk inherent in financial markets. Non zero market risk premia have been found in previous financial literature through an exploration of market data, quantifying the relationship between implied and realized volatility. Building upon previous work by Mielkie and Davison (2013) where an approximate solution was derived for options written on underlying assets with regime-switching volatility, we analyze the impact of the market price of volatility risk on theoretical option prices. Using financially intuitive constraints, we prove the necessity of placing restrictions on the market prices of volatility risk in order to get reasonable option prices. In particular, we show that negative state-dependent market prices of volatility risk are necessary in order for the option prices and corresponding hedge ratios to be financially rational. An exploration of the regime-switching option prices and their implied volatilities is given, as well as numerical results and intuition supporting our mathematical proofs.