Option Pricing for Pure Jump Processes with Markov Switching Compensators

Abstract

This paper proposes a model for asset prices which is the exponential of a pure jump process with an N-state Markov switching compensator. We argue that such a process has a good chance of capturing all the empirical stylized regularities of stock price dynamics and we provide a closed form representation of its characteristic function. We also provide a parsimonious representation of the (not necessarily unique) risk neutral density and show how to price and hedge a large class of options on assets whose prices follow this process.