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...

In this article, we study the effects on derivative pricing arising from price impacts by large traders. When a large trader issues a derivative and (partially) hedges his risk by trading in the underlying, he influences both his hedge portfolio and the derivative's payoff. In a Black–Scholes...

This paper presents an economic interpretation of the optimal “stopping” of perpetual project opportunities under both certainty and uncertainty. Prior to stopping, the expected rate of return from delay exceeds the rate of interest. The expected rate of return from delay is the sum of the...

Addressing issues of social diversity, we introduce a model of housing transactions between agents who are heterogeneous in their willingness to pay. A key assumption is that agents' preferences for a location depend on both an intrinsic attractiveness and on the social characteristics of the...

We prove that the undetermined Taylor series coefficients of local approximations to the policy function of arbitrary order in a wide class of discrete time dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models are solvable by standard DSGE perturbation methods under regularity and saddle point...

This paper shows how to solve dynamic agency models by extending recursive Lagrangean techniques à laMarcet and Marimon (2011) to problems with hidden actions. The method has many advantages with respect to the promised utilities approach (Abreu et al., 1990): it is a significant improvement in...

This paper analyses the contribution of various numerical approaches to making the estimation of threshold autoregressive time series more efficient. It relies on the computational advantages of QR factorizations and proposes Givens transformations to update these factors for sequential LS...

This paper studies a value function iteration algorithm based on nonexpansive function approximation and Monte Carlo integration that can be applied to almost all stationary dynamic programming problems. The method can be represented using a randomized fitted Bellman operator and a corresponding...

This paper investigates whether a regime switching model of stochastic lumber prices is better for the analysis of optimal harvesting problems in forestry than a more traditional single regime model. Prices of lumber derivatives are used to calibrate a regime switching model, with each of two...

Numerous optimal control models analyzed in economics are formulated as discounted infinite time horizon problems, where the defining functions are nonlinear as well in the states as in the controls. As a consequence solutions can often only be found numerically. Moreover, the long run optimal...