Wednesday, February 20, 2019

short rate - Vasicek model: joint simulation with discount factor


In Vasicek model, we have the following relation to get Discount factors given the value of short rate: P(t,T)=eA(t,T)B(t,T)rt


So, Discount factors are known as soon as we know the short rate. But then in some references like Glasserman (pg. 115) there is a whole subsection on "Joint Simulation [of short rate] with the Discount Factor" where he talks about simulating the pair (rt,t0r(u)du)

.


Piterbarg's book has something similar too. So my question is - why do we need to simulate Discount factor if we have an exact analytical result.



Answer



Although it's been a long time this question has been asked, I'd like to propose an answer in case someone was looking for the same thing.


First, I think there's a confusion between P(t,T) and DF(t,T). The former is the tprice of a contract paying 1 unit of currency at date T while the later is the (stochastic) discount factor at t for flows occuring at T. The two are linked through the relationship P(t,T)=EQ[DF(t,T)]


If rt is the instantaneous short rate, then DF(t,T) is given by DF(t,T)=eTtrsds

and is a random variable.


Now, the argument of Glasserman is about computing Ttrsds. In theory, since one has rt up to maturity on a given path, this is just a matter of doing a Riemann sum. However, this may be very "noisy" because of discretization errors. It turns ou, as AXH mentionned, that (rt,Ttrsds) are jointly gaussian and can be simulated precisely.


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