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In this dissertation, we evaluate existing Monte Carlo estimators and develop new Monte Carlo estimators for pricing financial options with the goal of improving precision. In Chapter 2, we discuss the conditional expectation Monte Carlo estimator for pricing barrier options, and show that the formulas for this estimator that are used in the literature are incorrect. We provide a correct version of the formula. In Chapter 3, we focus on importance sampling methods in estimating the price of barrier options. We show how a simulated annealing procedure can be used to estimate the parameters required in the importance sampling method. We end this chapter by evaluating the performance of the combined importance sampling and conditional expectation method. In Chapter 4, we analyze the estimators introduced by Ross and Shanthikumar in pricing barrier options and present a numerical example to test their performance.
