Optimal investment-reinsurance with dynamic risk constraint and regime switching

We study an optimal investment–reinsurance problem for an insurer who faces dynamic risk constraint in a Markovian regime-switching environment. The goal of the insurer is to maximize the expected utility of terminal wealth. Here the dynamic risk constraint is described by the maximal conditional Value at Risk over different economic states. The rationale is to provide a prudent investment–reinsurance strategy by taking into account the worst case scenario over different economic states. Using the dynamic programming approach, we obtain an analytical solution of the problem when the insurance business is modeled by either the classical Cramer–Lundberg model or its diffusion approximation. We document some important qualitative behaviors of the optimal investment–reinsurance strategies and investigate the impacts of switching regimes and risk constraint on the optimal strategies.     

制度性调整是中国股市2001年以来暴跌的原因

作者认为 ,中国股市 2 0 0 1年下半年以来的惨跌 ,是股市制度发生强制性调整的原因所致。虽然在深幅下跌后或救市下随时可能出现反弹甚至较强反弹 ,但下跌的运动还不会停止。这种制度调整的后果近乎于“推倒重来” ,虽然政府并没有声明选择“推倒重来”的政策 ,但阻止下跌和稳定股市需要的是一个实实在在的合理的制度安排     

A Continuous Time Model to Price Commodity-Based Swing Options

On the commodity market there exist contracts which give the holder multiple opportunities to adjust delivery of the underlying commodity. These contracts are often named “Swing” or “take-or-pay” options. They are especially common on the electricity market.In this paper the price of a Swing option on commodities is investigated under the additional constraint of a recovery time between two different exercise times. We give an explicit characterization of the price function as the value function of a continuous stochastic impulse control problem and prove existence of an optimal control. We investigate the connection between the price function and the solution of a system of quasi-variational inequalities. Finally, we present a numerical algorithm for solving the quasi-variational inequalities, and give some numerical examples.JEL Classification: C61, C62, C63     

A Statistical Inquiry into the Plausibility of Recursive Utility

We use purely statistical methods to determine if the pricingkernel is the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution underrecursive utility. We introduce a nonparametric Bayesian methodthat treats the pricing kernel as a latent variable and extractsit and its transition density from payoffs on 24 Fama-Frenchportfolios, on bonds, and on payoffs that use conditioning informationavailable when portfolios are formed. Our priors are formedfrom an examination of a Bansal-Yaron economy. Using both monthlydata and annual data, we find that the data support recursiveutility.     

Cross-sectional tests of deterministic volatility functions

We study the cross-sectional performance of option pricing models in which the volatility of the underlying stock is a deterministic function of the stock price and time. For each date in our sample of FTSE 100 index option prices, we fit an implied binomial tree to the panel of all European style options with different strike prices and maturities and then examine how well this model prices a corresponding panel of American style options. We find that the implied binomial tree model performs no better than an ad-hoc procedure of smoothing Black–Scholes implied volatilities across strike prices and maturities. Our cross-sectional results complement the time-series findings of Dumas et al. [J. Finance 53 (1998) 2059].     

On the Characterisation of Investor Preferences by Changes in Wealth

As wealth increases, preference of one fixed gamble over another typically changes once or not at all. A key question is whether certain assumptions on preferences guarantee such behaviour. Bell [Management Science, 34(12), 1416–1424, 1988; 41, 1145–1150, 1995a; 41(1), 23–30, 1995b] has addressed this difficult question and characterised the specific functional form of utility functions which allow a finite number of switches between two arbitrary gambles over the entire range of initial wealth. By extending this analysis, and linking the discussion to more recent works, the authors characterise conditions under which a large set of utility functions with respect to their switching characteristics, and discuss the results in the context of the classical notion of decreasing absolute risk aversion.     

An options-based approach to evaluating the risk of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac assume a significant amount of interest and prepayment risk and all of the credit risk for about half of the $8 trillion U.S. residential mortgage market. Their hybrid government-private status, and the perception that they are too big to fail, make them a potentially large, but largely unaccounted for, risk to the federal government. Measuring the size and risk of this liability is technically difficult, but important for the debate over the appropriate regulation of these institutions. Here we take an options pricing approach to evaluating these costs and risks. Under the base case assumptions, the estimated value of the guarantees is $7.9 billion over 10 years, with a combined .5 percent value at risk of $122 billion. We evaluate the sensitivity of these estimates to various modeling assumptions, and also to the regulatory regime, including forbearance policies and capital requirements. The analysis highlights the benefits, but also the challenges, of taking an options-based approach to evaluating the value of federal credit guarantees.     

Long-run productivity risk: A new hope for production-based asset pricing?

The examination of the intertemporal distribution of US productivity risk suggests that the conditional mean of productivity growth is an important determinant of macro quantities and asset prices. After establishing this empirical link, I rationalize it in a production economy featuring long-run productivity risk, Epstein and Zin (1989) preferences, and investment frictions. Both convex capital adjustment costs and convex reallocation costs across consumption and investment produce an annual equity premium as sizeable as in the data.     

A geometric approach to portfolio optimization in models with transaction costs

We consider a continuous-time stochastic optimization problem with infinite horizon, linear dynamics, and cone constraints which includes as a particular case portfolio selection problems under transaction costs for models of stock and currency markets. Using an appropriate geometric formalism we show that the Bellman function is the unique viscosity solution of a HJB equation.Mathematics Subject Classification (1991): 60G44JEL Classification: G13, G11This research was done at Munich University of Technology supported by a Mercator Guest Professorship of the German Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). The authors also express their thanks to Mark Davis, Steve Shreve, and Michael Taksar for useful discussions concerning the principle of dynamic programming.