Computational exploration of the biological basis of Black-Scholes expected utility function (Q933867)

Summary: It has often been argued that there exists an underlying biological basis of utility functions. Taking this line of argument a step further in this paper, we have aimed to computationally demonstrate the biological basis of the Black-Scholes functional form as applied to classical option pricing and hedging theory. The evolutionary optimality of the classical Black-Scholes function has been computationally established by means of a haploid genetic algorithm model. The objective was to minimize the dynamic hedging error for a portfolio of assets that is built to replicate the payoff from a European multi-asset option. The functional form that is seen to evolve over successive generations which best attains this optimization objective is the classical Black-Scholes function extended to a multiasset scenario.