This study develops and implements a theory and method for analyzing whether introducing new securities or relaxing investment constraints improves the investment opportunity set for risk averse investors. We develop a test procedure for ‘stochastic spanning’ for two nested polyhedral...

We derive critical values for the violation area in Nth order Almost Stochastic Dominance based on the Nth degree coefficient of relative risk aversion of reasonable utility functions. Our critical values are consistent with existing experimental estimates but apply for a broader range of choice...

To analyze the economic significance of pricing errors of stock index options, a system of linear inequalities is developed which completely characterizes all risk arbitrage opportunities which arise if a well-behaved pricing kernel does not exist. The Stochastic Arbitrage system can account for...

This study develops a portfolio optimization method based on the Stochastic Dominance (SD) decision criterion and the Empirical Likelihood (EL) estimation method. SD and EL share a distribution-free assumption framework which allows for dynamic and non-Gaussian multivariate return distributions....

If a given risky prospect is compared with multiple choice alternatives, then a joint test for optimality is more appropriate than a series of pairwise Stochastic Dominance tests. We develop and implement a bootstrap empirical likelihood ratio test for this hypothesis. The test statistic and...