No Arabic abstract
We adress the maximization problem of expected utility from terminal wealth. The special feature of this paper is that we consider a financial market where the price process of risky assets can have a default time. Using dynamic programming, we characterize the value function with a backward stochastic differential equation and the optimal portfolio policies. We separately treat the cases of exponential, power and logarithmic utility.
This paper solves the consumption-investment problem under Epstein-Zin preferences on a random horizon. In an incomplete market, we take the random horizon to be a stopping time adapted to the market filtration, generated by all observable, but not necessarily tradable, state processes. Contrary to prior studies, we do not impose any fixed upper bound for the random horizon, allowing for truly unbounded ones. Focusing on the empirically relevant case where the risk aversion and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution are both larger than one, we characterize the optimal consumption and investment strategies using backward stochastic differential equations with superlinear growth on unbounded random horizons. This characterization, compared with the classical fixed-horizon result, involves an additional stochastic process that serves to capture the randomness of the horizon. As demonstrated in two concrete examples, changing from a fixed horizon to a random one drastically alters the optimal strategies.
We consider the Brownian market model and the problem of expected utility maximization of terminal wealth. We, specifically, examine the problem of maximizing the utility of terminal wealth under the presence of transaction costs of a fund/agent investing in futures markets. We offer some preliminary remarks about statistical arbitrage strategies and we set the framework for futures markets, and introduce concepts such as margin, gearing and slippage. The setting is of discrete time, and the price evolution of the futures prices is modelled as discrete random sequence involving Itos sums. We assume the drift and the Brownian motion driving the return process are non-observable and the transaction costs are represented by the bid-ask spread. We provide explicit solution to the optimal portfolio process, and we offer an example using logarithmic utility.
Kramkov and Sirbu (2006, 2007) have shown that first-order approximations of power utility-based prices and hedging strategies can be computed by solving a mean-variance hedging problem under a specific equivalent martingale measure and relative to a suitable numeraire. In order to avoid the introduction of an additional state variable necessitated by the change of numeraire, we propose an alternative representation in terms of the original numeraire. More specifically, we characterize the relevant quantities using semimartingale characteristics similarly as in Cerny and Kallsen (2007) for mean-variance hedging. These results are illustrated by applying them to exponential Levy processes and stochastic volatility models of Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard type.
We propose a model for an insurance loss index and the claims process of a single insurance company holding a fraction of the total number of contracts that captures both ordinary losses and losses due to catastrophes. In this model we price a catastrophe derivative by the method of utility indifference pricing. The associated stochastic optimization problem is treated by techniques for piecewise deterministic Markov processes. A numerical study illustrates our results.
This paper develops numerical methods for finding optimal dividend pay-out and reinsurance policies. A generalized singular control formulation of surplus and discounted payoff function are introduced, where the surplus is modeled by a regime-switching process subject to both regular and singular controls. To approximate the value function and optimal controls, Markov chain approximation techniques are used to construct a discrete-time controlled Markov chain with two components. The proofs of the convergence of the approximation sequence to the surplus process and the value function are given. Examples of proportional and excess-of-loss reinsurance are presented to illustrate the applicability of the numerical methods.