Multilevel Monte Carlo simulation for Lévy processes based on the Wiener–Hopf factorisation

In Kuznetsov et al. (2011) a new Monte Carlo simulation technique was introduced for a large family of Lévy processes that is based on the Wiener–Hopf decomposition. We pursue this idea further by combining their technique with the recently introduced multilevel Monte Carlo methodology. Moreover, we provide here for the first time a theoretical analysis of the new Monte Carlo simulation technique in Kuznetsov et al. (2011) and of its multilevel variant for computing expectations of functions depending on the historical trajectory of a Lévy process. We derive rates of convergence for both methods and show that they are uniform with respect to the “jump activity” (e.g. characterised by the Blumenthal–Getoor index). We also present a modified version of the algorithm in Kuznetsov et al. (2011) which combined with the multilevel methodology obtains the optimal rate of convergence for general Lévy processes and Lipschitz functionals. This final result is only a theoretical one at present, since it requires independent sampling from a triple of distributions which is currently only possible for a limited number of processes.