Calibrated American option pricing by stochastic linear programming

Abstract

We propose an approach for computing the arbitrage-free interval for the price of an American option in discrete incomplete market models via linear programming. The main idea is built replicating strategies that use both the basic asset and some European derivatives available on the market for trading. This method goes under the name of calibrated option pricing and it has given significant results for European options. Here, we extend the analysis to American options showing that the arbitrage-free interval can be characterized in terms of martingale measures and that it gets significantly reduced with respect to the non-calibrated case.