The Uniform Integrability of Martingales. On a Question by Alexander Cherny

Let $X$ be a progressively measurable, almost surely right-continuous stochastic process such that $X_\tau \in L^1$ and $E[X_\tau] = E[X_0]$ for each finite stopping time $\tau$. In 2006, Cherny showed that $X$ is then a uniformly integrable martingale provided that $X$ is additionally nonnegative. Cherny then posed the question whether this implication also holds even if $X$ is not necessarily nonnegative. We provide an example that illustrates that this implication is wrong, in general. If, however, an additional integrability assumption is made on the limit inferior of $|X|$ then the implication holds. Finally, we argue that this integrability assumption holds if the stopping times are allowed to be randomized in a suitable sense.Comment: Revised version. Accepted for publication in Stochastic Processes and their Application

The Martingale Property in the Context of Stochastic Differential Equations

This note studies the martingale property of a nonnegative, continuous local martingale Z, given as a nonanticipative functional of a solution to a stochastic differential equation. The condition states that Z is a (uniformly integrable) martingale if and only if an integral test of a related functional holds.Comment: Revised version. Published in Electron. Commun. Proba

Conditioned Martingales

It is well known that upward conditioned Brownian motion is a three-dimensional Bessel process, and that a downward conditioned Bessel process is a Brownian motion. We give a simple proof for this result, which generalizes to any continuous local martingale and clarifies the role of finite versus infinite time in this setting. As a consequence, we can describe the law of regular diffusions that are conditioned upward or downward.Comment: Corrected several typos, improved formulations. Accepted by Electronic Communications in Probability; Electronic Communications in Probability, 2012, Volume 17, Issue 4

A one-dimensional diffusion hits points fast

A one-dimensional, continuous, regular, and strong Markov process $X$ with state space $E$ hits any point $z \in E$ fast with positive probability. To wit, if $\tau_z = \inf \{t \geq 0:X_{t} = z\}$, then $P_\xi({ \tau}_z0$ for all $\xi \in E$ and $\varepsilon>0$

Convergence in Models with Bounded Expected Relative Hazard Rates

We provide a general framework to study stochastic sequences related to individual learning in economics, learning automata in computer sciences, social learning in marketing, and other applications. More precisely, we study the asymptotic properties of a class of stochastic sequences that take values in $[0,1]$ and satisfy a property called "bounded expected relative hazard rates." Sequences that satisfy this property and feature "small step-size" or "shrinking step-size" converge to 1 with high probability or almost surely, respectively. These convergence results yield conditions for the learning models in B\"orgers, Morales, and Sarin (2004), Erev and Roth (1998), and Schlag (1998) to choose expected payoff maximizing actions with probability one in the long run.Comment: After revision. Accepted for publication by Journal of Economic Theor

Pathwise solvability of stochastic integral equations with generalized drift and non-smooth dispersion functions

We study one-dimensional stochastic integral equations with non-smooth dispersion coefficients, and with drift components that are not restricted to be absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure. In the spirit of Lamperti, Doss and Sussmann, we relate solutions of such equations to solutions of certain ordinary integral equations, indexed by a generic element of the underlying probability space. This relation allows us to solve the stochastic integral equations in a pathwise sense.Comment: Accepted for publication: Annales de l'Institut Henri Poincar\'

Supermartingales as Radon-Nikodym densities and related measure extensions

Certain countably and finitely additive measures can be associated to a given nonnegative supermartingale. Under weak assumptions on the underlying probability space, existence and (non)uniqueness results for such measures are proven.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/14-AOP956 in the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

On the Hedging of Options On Exploding Exchange Rates

We study a novel pricing operator for complete, local martingale models. The new pricing operator guarantees put-call parity to hold for model prices and the value of a forward contract to match the buy-and-hold strategy, even if the underlying follows strict local martingale dynamics. More precisely, we discuss a change of num\'eraire (change of currency) technique when the underlying is only a local martingale modelling for example an exchange rate. The new pricing operator assigns prices to contingent claims according to the minimal cost for superreplication strategies that succeed with probability one for both currencies as num\'eraire. Within this context, we interpret the lack of the martingale property of an exchange-rate as a reflection of the possibility that the num\'eraire currency may devalue completely against the asset currency (hyperinflation).Comment: Major revision. Accepted by Finance and Stochastics. The original publication is available at http://link.springer.co