Short rate models with stochastic discontinuities: a PDE approach.

With the recent reform of interest rate benchmarks, interbank offered rates (IBORs) like LIBOR have been replaced by risk-free rates (RFRs), such as the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) in the U.S. and the Euro Short-Term Rate (€STR) in Europe. These rates exhibit characteristics like jumps and spikes that correspond to specific market events, driven by regulatory and liquidity constraints. To capture these characteristics, this paper considers a general short-rate model that incorporates discontinuities at fixed times with random sizes. Within this framework, we introduce a PDE-based approach for pricing interest rate derivatives. For affine models, we derive (quasi) closed-form solutions, while for the general case, we develop numerical methods to solve the resulting PDEs.
(Joint work with A. Calvia, C. Guardasoni, S. Sanfelici).