Value at Risk (VaR) has emerged in recent years as a standard tool to measure and control the risk of trading portfolios.Yet,existing theoretical analyses of the optimal behavior of a trader subject to VaR limits have produced a negative view of VaR as a risk-control tool. In particular,VaR...

A healthy financial system encourages the efficient allocation of capital and risk. The collapse of the house price bubble led to the financial crisis that started in 2007. There is a large empirical literature concerning the relation between asset price bubbles and financial crises. I evaluate...

This interdisciplinary paper explains how mathematical techniques of stochastic optimal control can be applied to the recent subprime mortgage crisis. Why did the financial markets fail to anticipate the recent debt crisis, despite the large literature in mathematical finance concerning optimal...

Creditors, banks and bank regulators should evaluate whether a borrower is likely to default. I apply several techniques in the extensive mathematical literature of stochastic optimal control/dynamic programming to derive an optimal debt in an environment where there are risks on both the asset...

Banks should evaluate whether a borrower is likely to default. I apply several techniques in the extensive mathematical literature of stochastic optimal control/dynamic programming to derive an optimal debt in an environment where there are risks on both the asset and liabilities sides. The...

Most economic models implicitly or explicitly assume that interactions between economic agents are 'global' - in other words, each agent interacts in a uniform manner with every other agent. However, localized interactions between microeconomic agents are a pervasive feature of reality. What are...

Banks should evaluate whether a borrower is likely to default. The author applies several techniques in the extensive mathematical literature of stochastic optimal control/dynamic programming to derive an optimal debt in an environment where there are risks on both the asset and liabilities...

Dynamic optimization is widely used in financial economics, macroeconomics and resource economics. This is accounting for some tension between the undergraduate and graduate teaching of economics because most undergraduate programs still concentrate on static economic analysis. This paper shows...

We present a geometric approach to discrete time multiperiod mean variance portfolio optimization that largely simplifies the mathematical analysis and the economic interpretation of such model settings. We show that multiperiod mean variance optimal policies can be decomposed in an orthogonal...

We investigate a portfolio optimization problem for an agent who invests in two assets, a risk-free and a risky asset modeled by a geometric Brownian motion. The investor faces both fixed and proportional transaction costs and liquidity constraints. His objective is to maximize the expected...