Discretizing the Heston Model: An Analysis of the Weak Convergence Rate

Abstract: In this manuscript we analyze the weak convergence rate of a discretization scheme for the Heston model. Under mild assumptions on the smoothness of the payoff and on the Feller index of the volatility process, respectively, we establish a weak convergence rate of order one. Moreover, under almost minimal assumptions we obtain weak convergence without a rate. These results are accompanied by several numerical examples. Our error analysis relies on a classical technique from Talay & Tubaro, a recent regularity estimate for the Heston PDE by Feehan & Pop and Malliavin calculus.