Exponential growth of credit default swaps market and the resulting pile of CDS contracts of notional value of $62 trillion by the end of 2007 as well as the OTC nature of the contracts are widely believed to be one of the main causes of the current crisis and its depth, because large volumes of...

In this paper, we argue that, once the costs of maintaining the hedging portfolio are properly taken into account, semi-static portfolios should more properly be thought of as separate classes of derivatives, with non-trivial, model-dependent payoff structures. We derive new integral...

Several discounted utility anomalies are explained as rational choices of an agent with standard preferences and stochastic income. We define the term structure of absolute risk aversion and demonstrate that the gain-loss asymmetry is observed for small gains and losses and a general utility...

We explain essentially all known discounted utility anomalies as artefacts of the optimizing behavior of an individual with a time-separable utility function, who perceives a good as a source of a stochastic consumption stream, and believes that she can wait for an optimal moment to buy or sell...

Here, two highly experienced authors present an alternative approach to optimal stopping problems. The basic ideas and techniques of the approach can be explained much simpler than the standard methods in the literature on optimal stopping problems. The monograph will teach the reader to apply...