The Convergence Rate of Option Prices in Trinomial Trees

Abstract

We study the convergence of the binomial, trinomial, and more generally m-nomial tree schemes when evaluating certain European path-independent options in the Black–Scholes setting. To our knowledge, the results here are the first for trinomial trees. Our main result provides formulae for the coefficients of 1/n and 1/n in the expansion of the error for digital and standard put and call options. This result is obtained from an Edgeworth series in the form of Kolassa–McCullagh, which we derive from a recently established Edgeworth series in the form of Esseen/Bhattacharya and Rao for triangular arrays of random variables. We apply our result to the most popular trinomial trees and provide numerical illustrations.