Financial institutions invest in financial securities like equities, options andgovernment bonds. Two measures, namely return and risk, are associated witheach investment position. Return is a measure of the profit or loss of theinvestment, whilst risk is defined as the uncertainty about...

An overview of modern and historical interest rate model theory is given with thespecific aim of derivative pricing. A variety of stochastic interest rate models arediscussed within a South African market context. The various models arecompared with respect to characteristics such as mean...

The use of options on various stock markets over the world has introduced a unique opportunity for investors to hedge, speculate, create synthetic financial instruments and reduce funding and other costs in their trading strategies.The power of options lies in their versatility. They enable an...

Thesis (PhD (Statistics and Actuarial Science))--University of Stellenbosch, 2011.

Extremes are unusual or rare events. However, when such events – for exampleearthquakes, tidal waves and market crashes - do take place, they typically causeenormous losses, both in terms of human lives and monetary value. For this reason,it is of critical importance to accurately model...

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this study is to obtain estimates and confidence intervals for welfareindices under complex sampling. It begins by looking at sampling in general withspecific focus on complex sampling and weighting. For the estimation of the welfareindices, two resampling...

The goodness-of- t of a statistical model describes how well it ts a set of observations. Measuresof goodness-of- t typically summarize the discrepancy between observed values and the valuesexpected under the model in question. Such measures can be used in statistical hypothesistesting, for...

In recent times many theories have surfaced posing challenging threats to the Efficient Market Hypothesis. We are entering an exciting era of financial economics fueled by the urge to have a better understanding of the intricate workings of financial markets. Many studies are emerging that...

We consider the problem of model assessment by risk estimation. Variousapproaches to risk estimation are considered in a uni ed framework. This a discussion of various complexity dimensions and approaches to obtainingbounds on covering numbers is also presented.The second type of training sample...