Pricing American bond options using a cubic spline collocation method

Abstract

In this paper, American options on a discount bond are priced under the Cox-Ingrosll-Ross (CIR) model. The linear complementarity problem of the option value is solved numerically by a penalty method. The problem is transformed into a nonlinear partial differential equation (PDE) by adding a power penalty term. The solution of the penalized problem converges to the one of the original problem. To numerically solve this nonlinear PDE, we use the horizontal method of lines to discretize the temporal variable and the spatial variable by means of trapezoidal method and a cubic spline collocation method, respectively. We show that this full discretization scheme is second order convergent, and hence the convergence of the numerical solution to the viscosity solution of the continuous problem is guaranteed. Numerical results are presented and compared with other collocation methods given in the literature.