Stochastic Processes With Applications To Finance Second Edition

Financial engineering has been proven to be a useful tool for risk management, but using the theory in practice requires a thorough understanding of the risks and ethical standards involved. Stochastic Processes with Applications to Finance, Second Edition presents the mathematical theory of financial engineering using only basic mathematical tools

This book introduces the theory of stochastic processes with applications taken from physics and finance. Fundamental concepts like the random walk or Brownian motion but also Levy-stable distributions are discussed. Applications are selected to show the interdisciplinary character of the concepts and methods. In the second edition of the book a discussion of extreme events ranging from their mathematical definition to their importance for financial crashes was included. The exposition of basic notions of probability theory and the Brownian motion problem as well as the relation between conservative diffusion processes and quantum mechanics is expanded. The second edition also enlarges the treatment of financial markets. Beyond a presentation of geometric Brownian motion and the Black-Scholes approach to option pricing as well as the econophysics analysis of the stylized facts of financial markets, an introduction to agent based modeling approaches is given.

This book presents a concise treatment of stochastic calculus and its applications. It gives a simple but rigorous treatment of the subject including a range of advanced topics, it is useful for practitioners who use advanced theoretical results. It covers advanced applications, such as models in mathematical finance, biology and engineering.Self-contained and unified in presentation, the book contains many solved examples and exercises. It may be used as a textbook by advanced undergraduates and graduate students in stochastic calculus and financial mathematics. It is also suitable for practitioners who wish to gain an understanding or working knowledge of the subject. For mathematicians, this book could be a first text on stochastic calculus; it is good companion to more advanced texts by a way of examples and exercises. For people from other fields, it provides a way to gain a working knowledge of stochastic calculus. It shows all readers the applications of stochastic calculus methods and takes readers to the technical level required in research and sophisticated modelling.This second edition contains a new chapter on bonds, interest rates and their options. New materials include more worked out examples in all chapters, best estimators, more results on change of time, change of measure, random measures, new results on exotic options, FX options, stochastic and implied volatility, models of the age-dependent branching process and the stochastic Lotka-Volterra model in biology, non-linear filtering in engineering and five new figures.Instructors can obtain slides of the text from the author.

Unlike traditional books presenting stochastic processes in an academic way, this book includes concrete applications that students will find interesting such as gambling, finance, physics, signal processing, statistics, fractals, and biology. Written with an important illustrated guide in the beginning, it contains many illustrations, photos and pictures, along with several website links. Computational tools such as simulation and Monte Carlo methods are included as well as complete toolboxes for both traditional and new computational techniques.

This book presents a concise treatment of stochastic calculus and its applications. It gives a simple but rigorous treatment of the subject including a range of advanced topics, it is useful for practitioners who use advanced theoretical results. It covers advanced applications, such as models in mathematical finance, biology and engineering.Self-contained and unified in presentation, the book contains many solved examples and exercises. It may be used as a textbook by advanced undergraduates and graduate students in stochastic calculus and financial mathematics. It is also suitable for practitioners who wish to gain an understanding or working knowledge of the subject. For mathematicians, this book could be a first text on stochastic calculus; it is good companion to more advanced texts by a way of examples and exercises. For people from other fields, it provides a way to gain a working knowledge of stochastic calculus. It shows all readers the applications of stochastic calculus methods and takes readers to the technical level required in research and sophisticated modelling.This second edition contains a new chapter on bonds, interest rates and their options. New materials include more worked out examples in all chapters, best estimators, more results on change of time, change of measure, random measures, new results on exotic options, FX options, stochastic and implied volatility, models of the age-dependent branching process and the stochastic Lotka-Volterra model in biology, non-linear filtering in engineering and five new figures.Instructors can obtain slides of the text from the author./a

Financial engineering has been proven to be a useful tool for risk management, but using the theory in practice requires a thorough understanding of the risks and ethical standards involved. Stochastic Processes with Applications to Finance, Second Edition presents the mathematical theory of financial engineering using only basic mathematical tools that are easy to understand even for those with little mathematical expertise. This second edition covers several important developments in the financial industry. New to the Second Edition A chapter on the change of measures and pricing of insurance products Many examples of the change of measure technique, including its use in asset pricing theory A section on the use of copulas, especially in the pricing of CDOs Two chapters that offer more coverage of interest rate derivatives and credit derivatives Exploring the merge of actuarial science and financial engineering, this edition examines how the pricing of insurance products, such as equity-linked annuities, requires knowledge of asset pricing theory since the equity index can be traded in the market. The book looks at the development of many probability transforms for pricing insurance risks, including the Esscher transform. It also describes how the copula model is used to model the joint distribution of underlying assets. By presenting significant results in discrete processes and showing how to transfer the results to their continuous counterparts, this text imparts an accessible, practical understanding of the subject. It helps readers not only grasp the theory of financial engineering, but also implement the theory in business.

Expanding on the first edition of An Introduction to Continuous-Time Stochastic Processes, this concisely written book is a rigorous and self-contained introduction to the theory of continuous-time stochastic processes. A balance of theory and applications, the work features concrete examples of modeling real-world problems from biology, medicine, industrial applications, finance, and insurance using stochastic methods. No previous knowledge of stochastic processes is required.

Stochastic calculus has important applications to mathematical finance. This book will appeal to practitioners and students who want an elementary introduction to these areas. From the reviews: "As the preface says, ‘This is a text with an attitude, and it is designed to reflect, wherever possible and appropriate, a prejudice for the concrete over the abstract’. This is also reflected in the style of writing which is unusually lively for a mathematics book." --ZENTRALBLATT MATH

Building upon the previous editions, this textbook is a first course in stochastic processes taken by undergraduate and graduate students (MS and PhD students from math, statistics, economics, computer science, engineering, and finance departments) who have had a course in probability theory. It covers Markov chains in discrete and continuous time, Poisson processes, renewal processes, martingales, and option pricing. One can only learn a subject by seeing it in action, so there are a large number of examples and more than 300 carefully chosen exercises to deepen the reader’s understanding. Drawing from teaching experience and student feedback, there are many new examples and problems with solutions that use TI-83 to eliminate the tedious details of solving linear equations by hand, and the collection of exercises is much improved, with many more biological examples. Originally included in previous editions, material too advanced for this first course in stochastic processes has been eliminated while treatment of other topics useful for applications has been expanded. In addition, the ordering of topics has been improved; for example, the difficult subject of martingales is delayed until its usefulness can be applied in the treatment of mathematical finance.

This book presents a self-contained introduction to stochastic processes with emphasis on their applications in science, engineering, finance, computer science, and operations research. It provides theoretical foundations for modeling time-dependent random phenomena in these areas and illustrates their application by analyzing numerous practical examples. The treatment assumes few prerequisites, requiring only the standard mathematical maturity acquired by undergraduate applied science students. It includes an introductory chapter that summarizes the basic probability theory needed as background. Numerous exercises reinforce the concepts and techniques discussed and allow readers to assess their grasp of the subject. Solutions to most of the exercises are provided in an appendix. While focused primarily on practical aspects, the presentation includes some important proofs along with more challenging examples and exercises for those more theoretically inclined. Mastering the contents of this book prepares readers to apply stochastic modeling in their own fields and enables them to work more creatively with software designed for dealing with the data analysis aspects of stochastic processes.