A quadratic discrete time probabilistic model, for optimal portfolio selection in (re-)insurance is studied. For positive values of underwriting levels, the expected value of the accumulated result is optimized, under constraints on its variance and on annual ROE's. Existence of a unique...

We propose a novel portfolio selection approach that manages to ease some of the problems that characterise standard expected utility maximisation. The optimal portfolio is no longer defined as the extremum of a suitably chosen utility function: the latter, instead, is reinterpreted as the...

Credit risk models like Moody’s KMV are now well established in the market and give bond managers reliable estimates of default probabilities for individual firms. Until now it has been hard to relate those probabilities to the actual credit spreads observed on the market for corporate bonds....

Efforts to simulate turbulence in the financial markets include experiments with the logistic equation: x(t)=kappa x(t-1)[1-x(t-1)], with 0 x(t)1 and 0 = kappa 4. Visual investigation of the logistic equation show the various stability and instability regimes for the various value of the...

In this paper, I analyze recent findings by Coe and Helpman (1995) of trade-related international R&D spillovers. I show generally that randomly created bilateral trade shares also give rise to large estimated international R&D spillovers; often, in fact, to larger estimated spillover effects...

In this paper we investigate the so called foresight bias that may appear in the Monte-Carlo pricing of Bermudan and compound options if the exercise criteria is calculated by the same Monte-Carlo simulation as the exercise values. The standard approach to remove the foresight bias is to use two...

We propose a structural credit risk model for consumer lending using option theory and the concept of the value of the consumer’s reputation. Using Brazilian empirical data and a credit bureau score as proxy for creditworthiness we compare a number of alternative models before suggesting one...

In this paper we apply a simple macro model to explore and evaluate certain optimal monetary policy rules for China's economy. To be more consistent with the central bank (the People's Bank of China)'s behaviour, we use money supply as a monetary policy instrument rather than the commonly used...

The paper discusses some of the problems of subsistence agriculture in countries in transition and proposes a methodology for analysis. It demonstrates that approaches which ignore the dualistic agriculture structure cannot provide consistent estimates of the behavioural parameters of the total...

Using one of the key property of copulas that they remain invariant under an arbitrary monotonous change of variable, we investigate the null hypothesis that the dependence between financial assets can be modeled by the Gaussian copula. We find that most pairs of currencies and pairs of major...