No Arabic abstract
We study the stochastic solution to a Cauchy problem for a degenerate parabolic equation arising from option pricing. When the diffusion coefficient of the underlying price process is locally Holder continuous with exponent $deltain (0, 1]$, the stochastic solution, which represents the price of a European option, is shown to be a classical solution to the Cauchy problem. This improves the standard requirement $deltage 1/2$. Uniqueness results, including a Feynman-Kac formula and a comparison theorem, are established without assuming the usual linear growth condition on the diffusion coefficient. When the stochastic solution is not smooth, it is characterized as the limit of an approximating smooth stochastic solutions. In deriving the main results, we discover a new, probabilistic proof of Kotanis criterion for martingality of a one-dimensional diffusion in natural scale.
A stochastic transport linear equation (STLE) with multiplicative space-time dependent noise is studied. It is shown that, under suitable assumptions on the noise, a multiplicative renormalization leads to convergence of the solutions of STLE to the solution of a deterministic parabolic equation. Existence and uniqueness for STLE are also discussed. Our method works in dimension $dgeq 2$; the case $d=1$ is also investigated but no conclusive answer is obtained.
We prove a stochastic representation formula for the viscosity solution of Dirichlet terminal-boundary value problem for a degenerate Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman integro-partial differential equation in a bounded domain. We show that the unique viscosity solution is the value function of the associated stochastic optimal control problem. We also obtain the dynamic programming principle for the associated stochastic optimal control problem in a bounded domain.
We consider the problem of superhedging under volatility uncertainty for an investor allowed to dynamically trade the underlying asset, and statically trade European call options for all possible strikes with some given maturity. This problem is classically approached by means of the Skorohod Embedding Problem (SEP). Instead, we provide a dual formulation which converts the superhedging problem into a continuous martingale optimal transportation problem. We then show that this formulation allows us to recover previously known results about lookback options. In particular, our methodology induces a new proof of the optimality of Az{e}ma-Yor solution of the SEP for a certain class of lookback options. Unlike the SEP technique, our approach applies to a large class of exotics and is suitable for numerical approximation techniques.
We construct a probabilistic representation of a system of fully coupled parabolic equations arising as a model describing spatial segregation of interacting population species. We derive a closed system of stochastic equations such that its solution allows to obtain a probabilistic representation of a weak solution of the Cauchy problem for the PDE system. The corresponded stochastic system is presented in the form of a system of stochastic equations describing nonlinear Markov processes and their multiplicative functionals.
Conditions for the existence and uniqueness of weak solutions for a class of nonlinear nonlocal degenerate parabolic equations are established. The asymptotic behaviour of the solutions as time tends to infinity are also studied. In particular, the finite time extinction and polynomial decay properties are proved.