Figuring the Plural

This report is an examination of ethnocultural, or ethnically/culturally specific, arts organizations in Canada and the United States.As our societies rapidly diversify and we seek to negotiate our increasingly complex national identities, these organizations possess enormous potential to assist in this process for they serve as cultural advocates, cultural interpreters, facilitators of cross-cultural understanding and communication keepers of ethnic tradition, and/or sites where prejudice is exposed and challenged

Efficient, almost exact simulation of the Heston stochastic volatility model

We deal with several efficient discretization methods for the simulation of the Heston stochastic volatility model. The resulting schemes can be used to calculate all kind of options and corresponding sensitivities, in particular the exotic options that cannot be valued with closed-form solutions. We focus on to the (computational) efficiency of the simulation schemes: though the Broadie and Kaya (2006) paper provided an exact simulation method for the Heston dynamics, we argue why its practical use might be limited. Instead we consider efficient approximations of the exact scheme, which try to exploit certain distributional features of the underlying variance process. The resulting methods are fast, highly accurate and easy to implement. We conclude by numerically comparing our new schemes to the exact scheme of Broadie and Kaya, the almost exact scheme of Smith, the Kahl-Jackel scheme, the Full Truncation scheme of Lord et al. and the Quadratic Exponential scheme of Andersen

Market integration in Elgeyo Marakwet and west Pokot: comparing households and locations

Within Kenya, Elgeyo Marakwet and west Pokot are two peripheral districts. Recently they are experiencing rapid changes and most probably they are heading towards a radical transformation in the 1980's. Not only in the high potential parts, but also in the semi-arid areas of the Kerio Valley. The keyword for the processes of change is 'Market integration’. Wage labour employment and local off-farm income are no longer of minor importance only. Agriculture and livestock production are commercialising. Land is enclosed and a land market is developing. Farm inputs are bought and many consumer goods and services are no longer only produced by the households themselves. External change agencies play a crucial role in these developments, especially government development projects seem to be important. This paper presents a joint research proposal about the regional and social differentiation of these processes of market integration. On a low level of scale, comparing 27 locations within the two districts, a historical study will be carried out about the relationship between the location of development efforts and the extent and kind of market integration. Within a number o f 'typical’ locations, households will be studied to find out the variation in market integration between them and the changes in tasks and in access to resources, income and decisions within the households

Generic pricing of FX, inflation and stock options under stochastic interest rates and stochastic volatility

We consider the pricing of FX, inflation and stock options under stochastic interest rates and stochastic volatility, for which we use a generic multi-currency framework. We allow for a general correlation structure between the drivers of the volatility, the inflation index, the domestic (nominal) and the foreign (real) rates. Having the flexibility to correlate the underlying FX/Inflation/Stock index with both stochastic volatility and stochastic interest rates yields a realistic model, which is of practical importance for the pricing and hedging of options with a long-term exposure. We derive explicit valuation formulas for various securities, such as vanilla call/put options, forward starting options, inflation-indexed swaps and inflation caps/floors. These vanilla derivatives can be valued in closed-form under Schobel and Zhu (1999) stochastic volatility, whereas we devise an (Monte Carlo) approximation in the form of a very effective control variate for the general Heston (1993) model. Finally, we numerical investigate the quality of this approximation and consider a calibration example to FX market data

María Luisa Bemberg y Octavio Paz sobre Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

El artículo realiza un análisis entre similitudes y diferencias presentes en la interpretación de Sor Juana en la obra de Octavio Paz Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las Trampas de la fe (1982) y la película de María Luisa Bemberg Yo, la peor de todas (1990). La relación entre literatura, cine y género presente en este artículo desemboca en un diálogo intertextual donde los elementos simbólicos y sus representaciones cobran relevancia.The article realises an analysis between similarities and diferences present in the interpretation of Sister Juana in the work of Octavio Paz Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las Trampas de la fe (1982) and the film of María Luisa Bemberg Yo, la peor de todas (1990). The relation between literature, cinema and genre present sort in this article ends at a intertextual dialogue where the symbolic elements and their representations acquire relevance

Pricing long-maturity equity and FX derivatives with stochastic interest rates and stochastic equity

In this paper we extend the stochastic volatility model of Schoebel and Zhu (1999) by including stochastic interest rates. Furthermore we allow all driving model factors to be instantaneously correlated with each other, i.e. we allow for a correlation between the instantaneous interest rates, the volatilities and the underlying stock returns. By deriving the characteristic function of the log-asset price distribution, we are able to price European stock options in closed-form by Fourier inversion. Furthermore we present a Foreign Exchange generalization and show how the pricing of Forward-starting options like cliquets can be performed. Additionally we discuss the practical implementation of these new models