Central Limit Theorem for the Multilevel Monte Carlo Euler Method 1 1 Mohamed Ben Alaya & Ahmed Kebaier∗ 1 Universit´eParis 13 Sorbonne Paris Cit´e, LAGA, CNRS (UMR 7539) 99, av. J.B. Cl´ement 93430 Villetaneuse, France
[email protected] [email protected] September 16, 2013 Abstract This paper focuses on studying the multilevel Monte Carlo method recently introduced by Giles [8] which is significantly more efficient than the classical Monte Carlo one. Our aim is to prove a central limit theorem of Lindeberg Feller type for the multilevel Monte Carlo method associated with the Euler discretization scheme. To do so, we prove first a stable law convergence theorem, in the spirit of Jacod and Protter [16], for the Euler scheme error on two consecutive levels of the algorithm. This leads to an accurate descrip- tion of the optimal choice of parameters and to an explicit characterization of the limiting variance in the central limit theorem of the algorithm. A complexity of the multilevel Monte Carlo algorithm is carried out. AMS 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. 60F05, 62F12, 65C05, 60H35. Key Words and Phrases. Central limit theorem, Multilevel Monte Carlo methods, Euler scheme, finance. 1 Introduction In many applications, in particular in the pricing of financial securities, we are interested in the effective computation by Monte Carlo methods of the quantity Ef(XT ), where X := (Xt)0≤t≤T is a diffusion process and f a given function. The Monte Carlo Euler method consists of n two steps. First, approximate the diffusion process (Xt)0≤t≤T by the Euler scheme (Xt )0≤t≤T E n 1 N n n with time step T/n.