We show that Australian options are equivalent to fixed or floating strike Asian options and consequently that by studying Asian options from the Australian perspective and vice versa, much can be gained. One specific application of this “Australian approach” leads to a natural dimension...

This paper introduces a numerical method for solving concave continuous state dynamic programming problems which is based on a pair of polyhedral approximations of concave functions. The method is globally convergent and produces computable upper and lower bounds on the value function which can...

Two difficulties arise in the estimation of AB models: (i) the criterion function has no simple analytical expression, (ii) the aggregate properties of the model cannot be analytically understood. In this paper we show how to circumvent these difficulties and under which conditions ergodic...

This paper provides a closed-form solution for the price-dividend ratio in a standard asset pricing model with stochastic volatility. The growth rate of the endowment is a first-order Gaussian autoregression, while the stochastic volatility innovations can be drawn from any distribution for...

In the literature, econometricians typically assume that household income is the sum of a random walk permanent component and a transitory component, with uncorrelated permanent and transitory shocks. Using data on realized individual incomes and individual expectations of future incomes from...

Lévy processes have been successfully applied in the modeling of financial assets. Useful information such as implied volatility, skewness, and risk-preferences can be derived from market option prices. In this paper, we advocate using Esscher conjugate Lévy processes to estimate risk-neutral...

This paper presents a dynamic portfolio credit model following the regulatory framework, using macroeconomic and latent risk factors to predict the aggregate loan portfolio loss in a banking system. The latent risk factors have three levels: global across the entire banking system,...

Although there are many models that yield a simple interpretation of the basic features of firm and industry evolution, they are too stylized to confront the micro-level data in a formal quantitative analysis. By introducing heterogeneity to a stylized industry evolution model, I explain several...

We propose a hypothesis testing procedure to investigate whether the same growth rate distribution is shared by all the firms in a balanced panel or, more generally, whether they share the same functional form for this distribution, without necessarily sharing the same parameters. We apply the...