The pricing of derivatives on assets with quadratic volatility

Abstract

The basic model of financial economics is the Samuelson model of geometric Brownian motion because of the celebrated Black-Scholes formula for pricing the call option. The asset's volatility is a linear function of the asset value and the model guarantees positive asset prices. In this paper, it is shown that the pricing partial differential equation can be solved for level-dependent volatility which is a quadratic polynomial. If zero is attainable, both absorption and negative asset values are possible. Explicit formulae are derived for the call option: a generalization of the Black-Scholes formula for an asset whose volatiliy is affine, the formula for the Bachelier model with constant volatility, and new formulae in the case of quadratic volatility. The implied Black-Scholes volatilities of the Bachelier and the affine model are frowns, the quadratic specifications imply smiles.