The method of variational inequalities is a useful theoretical tool in stochastic control, but there are few problems in which this method leads to an explicit solution. We present such a problem drawn from portfolio management. An agent can distribute his wealth between two investments, one...

Contemporary financial stochastic programs typically involve a trade-offbetween return and (downside)-risk. Using stochastic programming we characterize analytically (rather than numerically) the optimal decisions that follow from characteristic single-stage and multi-stage versions of such...

Using high-frequency data, we decompose the time-varying beta for stocks into beta for continuous systematic risk and beta for discontinuous systematic risk. Estimated discontinuous betas for S&P500 constituents between 2003 and 2011 generally exceed the corresponding continuous betas. We...

We investigate the optimal investment problem when the interest rate is stochastic and the investor must pay proportional transaction costs when buying and selling the risky assets. We first consider a portfolio of bonds and transaction costs.We then add a stock to the portfolio, and analyze the...

In an incomplete market we study the optimal consumption-portfolio decision of an investor with recursive preferences of Epstein-Zin type. Applying a classical dynamic programming approach, we formulate the associated Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation and provide a suitable verification theorem....

This paper treats the risk-averse optimal portfolio problem with consumption in continuous time for a stochastic-jump-volatility, jump-diffusion (SJVJD) model of the underlying risky asset and the volatility. The new developments are the use of the SJVJD model with...

We propose a novel linear approximation of expected utility. The approximation guides us as we transfer the traditional quadratic dependence of third-order stochastic dominance (TSD) into an equivalent linear system. The finding also shows a dual relationship between traditional low partial...