We consider the problem of optimally selecting a large portfolio of risky loans, such as mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, student loans, or business loans. Examples include loan portfolios held by financial institutions and fixed-income investors as well as pools of loans backing mortgage-...

We prove a law of large numbers for the loss from default and use it for approximating the distribution of the loss from default in large, potentially heterogenous portfolios. The density of the limiting measure is shown to solve a non-linear stochastic PDE, and certain moments of the limiting...