A new methodology for statistically testing contingent-claims asset-pricing models based on asymptotic statistical theory is proposed. It is introduced in the context of the Black-Scholes option-pricing model, for which some illustrative estimation, inference, and simulation results are also presented. The proposed methodology is then extended to arbitrary contingent claims by first considering the estimation problem for general Itô processes and then deriving the asymptotic distribution of a general contingent claim which depends upon such Itô processes.

Two of the most widely used statistical techniques for analyzing discrete economic phenomena are discriminant analysis (DA) and logit analysis. For purposes of parameter estimation, logit has been shown to be more robust than DA. However, under certain distributional assumptions both procedures yield consistent estimates and the DA estimator is asympototically efficient. This suggests a natural Hausman specification test of these distributional assumptions by comparing the two estimators. In this paper, such a test is proposed and an empirical example involving corporate bankruptcies is provided. The finite-sample properties of the test statistic are also explored through some sampling experiments.