The left-curtain martingale coupling in the presence of atoms

Abstract

Beiglböck and Juillet ("On a problem of optimal transport under marginal martingale constraints") introduced the left-curtain martingale coupling of probability measures $\mu$ and $\nu$, and proved that, when the initial law $\mu$ is continuous, it is supported by the graphs of two functions. We extend the later result by constructing the generalised left-curtain martingale coupling and show that for an arbitrary starting law $\mu$ it is characterised by two appropriately defined lower and upper functions. As an application of this result we derive the model-independent upper bound of an American put option. This extends recent results of Hobson and Norgilas ("Robust bounds for the American Put") on the atom-free case.

To appear in the Annals of Applied Probability. Updated references and a couple of new remarks. 20 pages, 6 figures