We provide an axiomatic foundation for the representation of num\'{e}raire-invariant preferences of economic agents acting in a financial market. In a static environment, the simple axioms turn out to be equivalent to the following choice rule: the agent prefers one outcome over another if and...

We solve the problem of pricing and optimal exercise of American call-type options in markets which do not necessarily admit an equivalent local martingale measure. This resolves an open question proposed by Fernholz and Karatzas [Stochastic Portfolio Theory: A Survey, Handbook of Numerical...

A wealth-process set is abstractly defined to consist of nonnegative c\`{a}dl\`{a}g processes containing a strictly positive semimartingale and satisfying an intuitive re-balancing property. Under the condition of absence of arbitrage of the first kind, it is established that all wealth...

This paper addresses the question of how to invest in a robust growth-optimal way in a market where the instantaneous expected return of the underlying process is unknown. The optimal investment strategy is identified using a generalized version of the principal eigenfunction for an elliptic...

We undertake a study of markets from the perspective of a financial agent with limited access to information. The set of wealth processes available to the agent is structured with reasonable economic properties, instead of the usual practice of taking it to consist of stochastic integrals...

We develop a maximum penalized quasi-likelihood estimator for estimating in a nonparametric way the diffusion function of a diffusion process, as an alternative to more traditional kernel-based estimators. After developing a numerical scheme for computing the maximizer of the penalized maximum...

The valuation process that economic agents undergo for investments with uncertain payoff typically depends on their statistical views on possible future outcomes, their attitudes toward risk, and, of course, the payoff structure itself. Yields vary across different investment opportunities and...

This work aims at a deeper understanding of the mathematical implications of the economically-sound condition of absence of arbitrages of the first kind in a financial market. In the spirit of the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing (FTAP), it is shown here that absence of arbitrages of the...

The concept of absence of opportunities for free lunches is one of the pillars in the economic theory of financial markets. This natural assumption has proved very fruitful and has lead to great mathematical, as well as economical, insights in Quantitative Finance. Formulating rigorously the...

An arbitrage strategy allows a financial agent to make certain profit out of nothing, i.e., out of zero initial investment. This has to be disallowed on economic basis if the market is in equilibrium state, as opportunities for riskless profit would result in an instantaneous movement of prices...