Download or read book The Early Exercise Premium in American Option Prices written by Lindsey McMurray and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The London stock options market trades both European and American style options on the same underlying asset--the FT- SE 100 stock index. This paper exploits this special feature to provide direct empirical evidence on the value of early exercise in American option prices. Significant early exercise premium is found in both calls and puts. The premium is significantly higher than that predicted analytically by the binomial option valuation model. The magnitude of this premium for in-the-money options is also considerably higher than that documented for the U.S. market on the basis of an imperfect proxy. Consistent with theoretical expectations, the premium of calls increases with the degree to which the option is in the money and with the dividends on the last ex-dividend date before option maturity; and the premium for puts is positively related to the degree to which the option is in the money and to the time to maturity, and negatively related to the dividends on the last ex-dividend date prior to expiration. The early exercise premium for calls is sometimes economically significant even when there is no possibility of dividends before maturity. At the same time, the American option often trades at a discount to its European counterpart greater in magnitude than the median bid-ask spread, though this does not necessarily signal economically significant pricing inefficiency.