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...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the 'SIAM Journal on Optimization', 2007, 18, 290-308. <P> In this paper we present two general results on the existence of a discrete zero point of a function from the n-dimensional integer lattice Zn to the n-dimensional Euclidean space Rn. Under...</p>

We explore the feasibility of a funded pension system with intergenerational risk sharing when participation in the system is voluntary. Typically, the willingness of the young to participate depends on their belief about the future young's willingness to do so. We characterise equilibria with...

We apply utility indifference pricing to solve a contingent claim problem, valuing a connected pair of gas fields where the underlying process is not standard Geometric Brownian motion and the assumption of complete markets is not fulfilled. First, empirical data are often characterized by...

In a recent paper, Fisher et al. (2001) present a method tomitigate end-effects in lot sizing by including a valuation term for end-of-horizon inventory in the objective function of the short-horizon model. Computational tests show that the proposed method outperforms the Wagner-Whitin algorithm...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in 'Mathematical Programming', ser. A, 2006, 108, 127-134. <P>

This paper considers a general class of stochastic dynamic choice models with discrete and continuous decision variables. This class contains a variety of models that are useful for modeling intertemporal household decisions under risk. Our examples are drawn from the field of development...

The Cross Entropy method is a well-known adaptive importance sampling method for rare-event probability estimation, which requires estimating an optimal importance sampling density within a parametric class. In this article we estimate an optimal importance sampling density within a wider...

In this paper we describe a Sequential Importance Sampling (SIS) procedure for counting the number of vertex covers in general graphs. The performance of SIS depends heavily on how close the SIS proposal distribution is to a uniform one over a suitably restricted set. The proposed algorithm...

Outcomes of the shallow lake interest conflict are presented in a number of different contexts: quasi-static and dynamic social planning, and quasi-static one-shot and repeated non-cooperative play. As the underlying dynamics are non-convex, the analysis uses geometrical-numerical methods: the...