We present a new way to model age-specific demographic variables with the example of age-specific mortality in the U.S., building on the Lee-Carter approach and extendingit in several dimensions. We incorporate covariates and model their dynamics jointly with the latent variables underlying...

Market option prices in last 20 years confirmed deviations from the Black and Scholes (BS) models assumptions, especially on the BS implied volatility. Implied binomialtrees (IBT) models capture the variations of the implied volatility known as \volatility smile". They provide a discrete...

In the ideal Black-Scholes world, financial time series are assumed 1) stationary (time homogeneous) and 2) having conditionally normal distribution given the past. These two assumptions have been widely-used in many methods such as the RiskMetrics, one risk management method considered as...

We propose a stochastic control approach to the dynamic maximization ofrobust utility functionals that are defined in terms of logarithmic utility and a dynamically consistent convex risk measure. The underlying market is modeled by a diffusion process whose coefficients are driven by an...

A new algorithm for finding value functions of finite horizon optimal stopping problems in one-dimensional diffusion models is presented. It is based on a time discretization of the corresponding integral equation. The proposed iterative procedure for solving the discretized integral equation...

As a main step in the numerical solution of control problems in continuous time,the controlled process is approximated by sequences of controlled Markov chains, thus discretising time and space. A new feature in this context is to allow for delay in the dynamics. The existence of an optimal...

State price densities (SPD) are an important element in applied quantitativefinance. In a Black-Scholes model they are lognormal distributions with constant volatility parameter. In practice volatility changes and the distribution deviates from log-normality. We estimate SPDs using EUREX option...

The subject of the present paper is a simplified model for a symmetric bistable system with memory or delay, the reference model, which in the presence of noise exhibits a phenomenon similar to what is known as stochastic resonance. The reference model is given by a one dimensional parametrized...

The catching up process in Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland is analyzed by investigating the integration properties of log-differences in per-capita GDP versus the EU15 and a Mediterranean country group. We account for structural changes by using unit root tests that allow for two endogenous...

The Black-Scholes formula, one of the major breakthroughs of modern finance,allows for an easy and fast computation of option prices. But some of its assumptions, like constant volatility or log-normal distribution of asset prices,do not find justification in the markets. More complex models,...