A standard problem in the field of computational finance is that of pricing derivative securities. This is often accomplished by estimating an expected value of a functional of a stochastic process, defined by a stochastic differential equation (SDE). In such a setting the random sampling algorithm Monte Carlo (MC) is useful, where paths of the process are sampled. However, MC in its standard form (SMC) is inherently slow. Additionally, if the analytical solution to the underlying SDE is not available, a numerical approximation of the process is necessary, adding another layer of computational complexity to the SMC algorithm. Thus, the computational cost of achieving a certain level of accuracy of the estimation using SMC may be relatively high. In this thesis we introduce and review the theory of the SMC method, with and without the need of numerical approximation for path simulation. Two numerical methods for path approximation are introduced: the Euler–Maruyama method and Milstein's method. Moreover, we also introduce and review the theory of a relatively new (2008) MC method – the multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) method – which is only applicable when paths are approximated. This method boldly claims that it can – under certain conditions – eradicate the additional complexity stemming from the approximation of paths. With this in mind, we wish to see whether this claim holds when pricing a European call option, where the underlying stock process is modelled by geometric Brownian motion. We also want to compare the performance of MLMC in this scenario to that of SMC, with and without path approximation. Two numerical experiments are performed. The first to determine the optimal implementation of MLMC, a static or adaptive approach. The second to illustrate the difference in performance of adaptive MLMC and SMC – depending on the used numerical method and whether the analytical solution is available. The results show that SMC is inferior to adaptive MLMC if numerical approximation of paths is needed, and that adaptive MLMC seems to meet the complexity of SMC with an analytical solution. However, while the complexity of adaptive MLMC is impressive, it cannot quite compensate for the additional cost of approximating paths, ending up roughly ten times slower than SMC with an analytical solution.

In this paper I derive the asymptotics of the exact, Euler, and Milstein ML estimators for diffusion models, including general nonstationary diffusions. Though there have been many estimators for the diffusion model, their asymptotic properties were generally unknown. This is especially true for the nonstationary processes, even though they are usually far from the standard ones. Using a new asymptotics with respect to both the time span T and the sampling interval ¢, I find the asymptotics of the estimators and also derive the conditions for the consistency. With this new asymptotic result, I could show that this result can explain the properties of the estimators more correctly than the existing asymptotics with respect only to the sample size n. I also show that there are many possibilities to get a better estimator utilizing this asymptotic result with a couple of examples, and in the second part of the paper, I derive the higher order asymptotics which can be used in the bootstrap analysis.

We investigate an explicit tamed Euler scheme of stochastic differential equation with random coefficients driven by Lévy noise, which has super-linear drift coefficient. The strong convergence property of the tamed Euler scheme is proved when drift coefficient satisfies one-sided local Lipschitz condition whereas diffusion and jump coefficients satisfy local Lipschitz conditions. A rate of convergence for the tamed Euler scheme is recovered when local Lipschitz conditions are replaced by global Lipschitz conditions and drift satisfies polynomial Lipschitz condition. These findings are consistent with those of the classical Euler scheme. New methodologies are developed to overcome challenges arising due to the jumps and the randomness of the coefficients. Moreover, as an application of these findings, a tamed Euler scheme is proposed for the stochastic delay differential equation driven by Lévy noise with drift coefficient that grows super-linearly in both delay and non-delay variables. The strong convergence property of the tamed Euler scheme for such SDDE driven by Lévy noise is studied and rate of convergence is shown to be consistent with that of the classical Euler scheme. Finally, an explicit tamed Milstein scheme with rate of convergence arbitrarily close to one is developed to approximate the stochastic differential equation driven by Lévy noise (without random coefficients) that has super-linearly growing drift coefficient.

A standard problem in mathematical finance is the calculation of the price of some financial derivative such as various types of options. Since there exists analytical solutions in only a few cases it will often boil down to estimating the price with Monte Carlo simulation in conjunction with some numerical discretization scheme. The upside of using what we can call standard Monte Carlo is that it is relative straightforward to apply and can be used for a wide variety of problems. The downside is that it has a relatively slow convergence which means that the computational cost or complexity can be very large. However, this slow convergence can be improved upon by using Multilevel Monte Carlo instead of standard Monte Carlo. With this approach it is possible to reduce the computational complexity and cost of simulation considerably. The aim of this thesis is to introduce the reader to the Multilevel Monte Carlo method with applications to European and Asian call options in both the Black-Scholes-Merton (BSM) model and in the Heston model. To this end we first cover the necessary background material such as basic probability theory, estimators and some of their properties, the stochastic integral, stochastic processes and Ito’s theorem. We introduce stochastic differential equations and two numerical discretizations schemes, the Euler–Maruyama scheme and the Milstein scheme. We define strong and weak convergence and illustrate these concepts with examples. We also describe the standard Monte Carlo method and then the theory and implementation of Multilevel Monte Carlo. In the applications part we perform numerical experiments where we compare standard Monte Carlo to Multilevel Monte Carlo in conjunction with the Euler–Maruyama scheme and Milsteins scheme. In the case of a European call in the BSM model, using the Euler–Maruyama scheme, we achieved a cost O(ε-2(log ε)2) to reach the desired error in accordance with theory in comparison to the O(ε-3) cost for standard Monte Carlo. When using Milsteins scheme instead of the Euler–Maruyama scheme it was possible to reduce the cost in terms of the number of simulations needed to achieve the desired error even further. By using Milsteins scheme, a method with greater order of strong convergence than Euler–Maruyama, we achieved the O(ε-2) cost predicted by the complexity theorem compared to the standard Monte Carlo cost of order O(ε-3). In the final numerical experiment we applied the Multilevel Monte Carlo method together with the Euler–Maruyama scheme to an Asian call in the Heston model. In this case, where the coefficients of the Heston model do not satisfy a global Lipschitz condition, the study of strong or weak convergence is much harder. The numerical experiments suggested that the strong convergence was slightly slower compared to what was found in the case of a European call in the BSM model. Nevertheless, we still achieved substantial savings in computational cost compared to using standard Monte Carlo.

Inspired by studies on the regularity of solutions to the fractional Navier-Stokes system and the impact of noise on singularity formation in hydrodynamic models, we investigated these issues within the framework of the fractional 1D Burgers equation. Initially, our research concentrated on the deterministic scenario, where we conducted precise numerical computations to understand the dynamics in both subcritical and supercritical regimes. We utilized a pseudo-spectral approach with automated resolution refinement for discretization in space combined with a hybrid Crank-Nicolson/ Runge-Kutta method for time discretization.We estimated the blow-up time by analyzing the evolution of enstrophy (H1 seminorm) and the width of the analyticity strip. Our findings in the deterministic case highlighted the interplay between dissipative and nonlinear components, leading to distinct dynamics and the formation of shocks and finite-time singularities. In the second part of our study, we explored the fractional Burgers equation under the influence of linear multiplicative noise. To tackle this problem, we employed the Milstein Monte Carlo approach to approximate stochastic effects. Our statistical analysis of stochastic solutions for various noise magnitudes showed that as noise amplitude increases, the distribution of blow-up times becomes more non-Gaussian. Specifically, higher noise levels result in extended mean blow-up time and increase its variability, indicating a regularizing effect of multiplicative noise on the solution. This highlights the crucial role of stochastic perturbations in influencing the behavior of singularities in such systems. Although the trends are rather weak, they nevertheless are consistent with the predictions of the theorem of [41]. However, there is no evidence for a complete elimination of blow-up, which is probably due to the fact that the noise amplitudes considered were not sufficiently large. This highlights the crucial role of stochastic perturbations in influencing the behavior of singularities in such systems. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Stochastic differential equations(SDEs) play an important role in many branches of engineering and science including economics, finance, chemistry, biology, mechanics etc. SDEs (with m-dimensional Wiener process) arising in many applications do not have explicit solutions, which implies the development of effective numerical methods for such systems. For SDEs, one can classify the numerical methods into three classes: fully implicit methods, semi-implicit methods and explicit methods. In order to solve SDEs, the computation of Newton iteration is necessary for the implicit and semi-implicit methods whereas for the explicit methods we do not need such computation. In this thesis the common theme is to construct explicit numerical methods with strong order 1.0 and 1.5 for solving Itˆo SDEs. The five-stage Milstein(FSM)methods, split-step forward Milstein(SSFM)methods and M-stage split-step strong Taylor(M-SSST) methods are constructed for solving SDEs. The FSM, SSFM and M-SSST methods are fully explicit methods. It is proved that the FSM and SSFM methods are convergent with strong order 1.0, and M-SSST methods are convergent with strong order 1.5.Stiffness is a very important issue for the numerical treatment of SDEs, similar to the case of deterministic ordinary differential equations. Stochastic stiffness can lead someone to use smaller step-size for the numerical simulation of the SDEs. However, such issues can be handled using numerical methods with better stability properties. The analysis of stability (with multidimensional Wiener process) shows that the mean-square stable regions of the FSM methods are unbounded. The analysis of stability shows that the mean-square stable regions of the FSM and SSFM methods are larger than the Milstein and three-stage Milstein methods. The M-SSST methods possess large mean square stability region as compared to the order 1.5 strong Itˆo-Taylor method. SDE systems simulated with the FSM, SSFM and M-SSST methods show the computational efficiency of the methods. In this work, we also consider the problem of computing numerical solutions for stochastic delay differential equations(SDDEs) of Itˆo form with a constant lag in the argument. The fully explicit methods, the predictor-corrector Euler(PCE)methods, are constructed for solving SDDEs. It is proved that the PCE methods are convergent with strong order γ = ½ in the mean-square sense. The conditions under which the PCE methods are MS-stable and GMS-stable are less restrictive as compared to the conditions for the Euler method.

Dans ce travail, nous nous intéressons aux estimateurs Multilevel Monte Carlo. Ces estimateurs vont apparaître sous leur forme standard, avec des poids et dans une forme randomisée. Nous allons rappeler leurs définitions et les résultats existants concernant ces estimateurs en termes de minimisation du coût de simulation. Nous allons ensuite montrer une loi forte des grands nombres et un théorème central limite. Après cela nous allons étudier deux cadres d'applications. Le premier est celui des diffusions avec schémas de discrétisation antithétiques, où nous allons étendre les estimateurs Multilevel aux estimateurs Multilevel avec poids. Le deuxième est le cadre nested, où nous allons nous concentrer sur les hypothèses d'erreur forte et faible. Nous allons conclure par l'implémentation de la forme randomisée des estimateurs Multilevel, en la comparant aux estimateurs Multilevel avec et sans poids. / In this work, we will focus on the Multilevel Monte Carlo estimators. These estimators will appear in their standard form, with weights and in their randomized form. We will recall the previous existing results concerning these estimators, in terms of minimization of the simulation cost. We will then show a strong law of large numbers and a central limit theorem.After that, we will focus on two application frameworks.The first one is the diffusions framework with antithetic discretization schemes, where we will extend the Multilevel estimators to Multilevel estimators with weights, and the second is the nested framework, where we will analyze the weak and the strong error assumptions. We will conclude by implementing the randomized form of the Multilevel estimators, comparing this to the Multilevel estimators with and without weights.