Applying the Wiener-Hopf Monte Carlo Simulation Technique for Lévy Processes to Path Functionals

In this note we apply the recently established Wiener-Hopf Monte Carlo (WHMC) simulation technique for Lévy processes from Kuznetsov et al. [22] to path functionals, in particular first passage times, overshoots, undershoots and the last maximum before the passage time. Such functionals have many applications, for instance in finance (the pricing of exotic options in a Lévy model) and insurance (ruin time, debt at ruin and related quantities for a Lévy insurance risk process). The technique works for any Lévy process whose running infimum and supremum evaluated at an independent exponential time allow sampling from. This includes classic examples such as stable processes, subclasses of spectrally one sided Lévy processes and large new families such as meromorphic Lévy processes. Finally we present some examples. A particular aspect that is illustrated is that the WHMC simulation technique (provided it applies) performs much better at approximating first passage times than a ‘plain’ Monte Carlo simulation technique based on sampling increments of the Lévy process.