Orthodox economic theory (utility maximization, rational agents, efficient markets in equilibrium) is based on arbitrarily postulated, nonempiric notions. The disagreement between economic reality and a key feature of neo-classical economic theory was criticized empirically by Osborne. I show...

In this paper we present a method for determining optimal trading strategies for Itô diffusion processes. By framing the problem in terms of the first passage time for the process we derive distribution and density functions for the trade length and use these functions to calculate the expected...

We complement the theory of tick-by-tick dynamics of financial markets based on a continuous-time random walk (CTRW) model recently proposed by Scalas et al. (Physica A 284 (2000) 376), and we point out its consistency with the behaviour observed in the waiting-time distribution for BUND future...

We compare two well-known examples of stochastic volatility models, the Heston model and the Hull–White model. We derive the stationary probability density distribution of the variance. In addition, we apply this stationary solution to the probability density distribution of the logarithmic...

We develop a framework based on microeconomic theory from which the ideal gas like market models can be addressed. A kinetic exchange model based on that framework is proposed and its distributional features have been studied by considering its moments. Next, we derive the moments of the CC...

We study the volatility of the MIB30-stock-index high-frequency data from November 28, 1994 through September 15, 1995. Our aim is to empirically characterize the volatility random walk in the framework of continuous-time finance. To this end, we compute the index volatility by means of the...

The scope of the paper is to find signatures of the forces controlling complex systems modeled by Langevin equations, by recourse to information-theory quantifiers. We evaluate in detail the permutation entropy (PE) and the permutation statistical complexity (PSC) measures for two similarity...

An efficient computational algorithm to price financial derivatives is presented. It is based on a path integral formulation of the pricing problem. It is shown how the path integral approach can be worked out in order to obtain fast and accurate predictions for the value of a large class of...

In this paper we present a rather general phenomenological theory of tick-by-tick dynamics in financial markets. Many well-known aspects, such as the Lévy scaling form, follow as particular cases of the theory. The theory fully takes into account the non-Markovian and non-local character of...

We apply an asymmetric version of Kirman's herding model to volatile financial markets. In the relation between returns and agent concentration we use the square root law proposed by Zhang. This can be derived by extending the idea of a critical mean field theory suggested by Plerou et al. We...