We assume that an agent's rate of consumption is {\it ratcheted}; that is, it forms a non-decreasing process. Given the rate of consumption, we act as financial advisers and find the optimal investment strategy for the agent who wishes to minimize his probability of ruin.

We find the optimal investment strategy to minimize the expected time that an individual's wealth stays below zero, the so-called {\it occupation time}. The individual consumes at a constant rate and invests in a Black-Scholes financial market consisting of one riskless and one risky asset, with...

In [2] the notion of stickiness for stochastic processes was introduced. It was also shown that stickiness implies absense of arbitrage in a market with proportional transaction costs. In this paper, we investigate the notion of stickiness further. In particular, we give examples of processes...

We develop a theory for valuing non-diversifiable mortality risk in an incomplete market by assuming that the company issuing a mortality-contingent claim requires compensation for this risk in the form of a pre-specified instantaneous Sharpe ratio. We apply our method to value life annuities....

We consider a framework for solving optimal liquidation problems in limit order books. In particular, order arrivals are modeled as a point process whose intensity depends on the liquidation price. We set up a stochastic control problem in which the goal is to maximize the expected revenue from...

We assume that an individual invests in a financial market with one riskless and one risky asset, with the latter's price following a diffusion with stochastic volatility. Given the rate of consumption, we find the optimal investment strategy for the individual who wishes to minimize the...

In this paper, we accomplish two objectives: First, we provide a new mathematical characterization of the value function for impulse control problems with implementation delay and present a direct solution method that differs from its counterparts that use quasi-variational inequalities. Our...