Valuation of vulnerable European options with market liquidity risk

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we investigate the pricing of vulnerable European options in a market where the underlying stocks are not perfectly liquid. A liquidity discount factor is used to model the effect of liquidity risk in the market, and the default risk of the option issuer is incorporated into the model using a reduced-form model, where the default intensity process is correlated with the liquidity risk. We obtain a semiclosed-form pricing formula of vulnerable options through the inverse Fourier transform. Finally, we illustrate the effects of default risk and liquidity risk on option prices numerically.