The economic concept of the second-best involves the idea that multiple simultaneous deviations from a hypothetical first-best optimum may be optimal once the first-best itself can no longer be achieved, since one distortion may partially compensate for another. Within an evolutionary framework,...

We study properties of structured financial products optimizing a utility functional of a customer. The conventional method may have the disadvantage that the a priori restriction to a certain number of assets could make it impossible to find the optimal portfolio. So instead of optimizing the...