We study the profit maximization problem of a market maker in a spread betting market. In this market, the market maker quotes cutoff lines for the outcome of a certain future event as “prices,” and bettors bet on whether the event outcome exceeds the cutoff lines. Anonymous bettors with...

Using a panel of Credit Default Swap (CDS) spreads and supply chain links, we observe that both favorable and unfavorable credit shocks propagate through supply chains in the CDS market. Particularly, the three-day cumulative abnormal CDS spread change (CASC) is 63 basis points for firms whose...

We consider a firm that designs a vertically differentiated product line for a population of cus- tomers with heterogeneous quality sensitivities. The firm faces an uncertainty about the cost of quality, and we formulate this uncertainty as a belief distribution on a set of cost models. Over a...

Based on the work of Brandt et al. (2009), we formulate an index tracking and enhanced indexation model using a parametric approach. The portfolio weights are modeled as functions of assets characteristics and similarity measures of the assets with the index to track. This approach permits...

Current risk management frameworks are not suitable for testing the long-term implications of balance sheet policies. The current established methodologies, such as interest rate gap analysis or Credit Value-at-Risk are short-term and do not give a clear picture of the long-term risk of a bank....

Renewable portfolio standards, feed-in-tariffs, and market premia are widely used policy instruments to promote investments in renewable energy sources. Regulators continuously evaluate these instruments along the main electricity policy objectives of affordability, reliability, and...

The value of an equity investment can be framed as an embedded call option on a firm's assets. The embedded call option creates a non-linear relationship between stock returns and underlying risk factors; however, such option value and the impact of this non-linearity are often underestimated or...

Taxable portfolios present challenges for optimization models with even a limited number of assets. Holding many assets, however, has a distinct tax advantage over holding few assets. In this paper, we develop a model that takes an extreme view of a portfolio as a continuum of assets to gain the...

We consider a platform in which multiple sellers offer their products for sale over a time horizon of T periods. Each seller sets its own price. The platform collects a fraction of the sales revenue and provides price-setting incentives to the sellers to maximize its own revenue. The demand for...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates the approval and safe public use of pharmaceutical products in the United States. The FDA uses postmarket surveillance systems to monitor drugs already on the market; a drug found to be associated with an increased risk of adverse events...