Development
The concept of a local volatility was developed when Bruno Dupire and Emanuel Derman and Iraj Kani noted that there is a unique diffusion process consistent with the risk neutral densities derived from the market prices of European options.
Derman and Kani described and implemented a local volatility function to model instantaneous volatility. They used this function at each node in a binomial options pricing model. The tree successfully produced option valuations consistent with all market prices across strikes and expirations. The Derman-Kani model was thus formulated with discrete time and stock-price steps. The key continuous-time equations used in local volatility models were developed by Bruno Dupire in 1994. Dupire's equation states
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