For Adam Smith, wealth was related to the division of labor. As people and firms specialize in different activities, economic efficiency increases, suggesting that development is associated with an increase in the number of individual activities and with the complexity that emerges from the...

Much of the analysis of economic growth has focused on the study of aggregate output. Here, we deviate from this tradition and look instead at the structure of output embodied in the network connecting countries to the products that they export.We characterize this network using four structural...

In rank aggregation, members of a population rank issues to decide which are collectively preferred. We focus instead on identifying divisive issues that express disagreements among the preferences of individuals. We analyse the properties of our divisiveness measures and their relation to...

We introduce an innovative theoretical framework to model derivative transactions between defaultable entities based on the principle of arbitrage freedom. Our framework extends the traditional formulations based on Credit and Debit Valuation Adjustments (CVA and DVA). Depending on how the...

We suggest an empirical model of investment strategy returns which elucidates the importance of non-Gaussian features, such as time-varying volatility, asymmetry and fat tails, in explaining the level of expected returns. Estimating the model on the (former) Lehman Brothers Hedge Fund Index...

We invert the Black-Scholes formula. We consider the cases low strike, large strike, short maturity and large maturity. We give explicitly the ?rst 5 terms of the expansions. A method to compute all the terms by induction is also given. At the money, we have a closed form formula for implied...

The so-called level crossing analysis has been used to investigate the empirical data set. But there is a lack of interpretation for what is reflected by the level crossing results. The fractional Gaussian noise as a well-defined stochastic series could be a suitable benchmark to make the level...

The global financial system has become highly connected and complex. Has been proven in practice that existing models, measures and reports of financial risk fail to capture some important systemic dimensions. Only lately, advisory boards have been established in high level and regulations are...

The inverse first passage time problem asks whether, for a Brownian motion $B$ and a nonnegative random variable $\zeta$, there exists a time-varying barrier $b$ such that $\mathbb{P}\{B_sb(s),0\leq s\leq t\}=\mathbb{P}\{\zetat\}$. We study a "smoothed" version of this problem and ask whether...

In this paper we consider a new mathematical extension of the Black-Scholes model in which the stochastic time and stock share price evolution is described by two independent random processes. The parent process is Brownian, and the directing process is inverse to the totally skewed, strictly...