Volume 3, Issue 1

In this paper we determine lowest cost strategies for given payoff distributions called cost-efficient strategies in multivariate exponential Lévy models where the pricing is based on the multivariate Esscher martingale measure. This multivariate framework allows to deal with dependent price processes as arising in typical applications. Dependence of the components of the Lévy Process implies an influence even on the pricing of efficient versions of univariate payoffs.We state various relevant existence and uniqueness results for the Esscher parameter and determine cost efficient strategies in particular in the case of price processes driven by multivariate NIG- and VG-processes. From a monotonicity characterization of efficient payoffs we obtain that basket options are generally inefficient in Lévy markets when pricing is based on the Esscher measure.We determine efficient versions of the basket options in real market data and show that the proposed cost efficient strategies are also feasible from a numerical viewpoint. As a result we find that a considerable efficiency loss may arise when using the inefficient payoffs.

Paul Embrechts is Professor of Mathematics at the ETH Zurich specializing in Actuarial Mathematics and Quantitative Risk Management. Previous academic positions include the Universities of Leuven, Limburg and London (Imperial College). Dr. Embrechts has held visiting professorships at several universities, including the Scuola Normale in Pisa (Cattedra Galileiana), the London School of Economics (Centennial Professor of Finance), the University of Vienna, Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne), theNationalUniversity of Singapore, KyotoUniversity,was Visiting Man Chair 2014 at the Oxford-Man Institute of Oxford University and has an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Waterloo, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, and the Université Catholique de Louvain. He is an Elected Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Statistical Association, Honorary Fellow of the Institute and the Faculty of Actuaries, Actuary-SAA, Member Honoris Causa of the Belgian Institute of Actuaries and is on the editorial board of numerous scientific journals.He belongs to various national and international research and academic advisory committees. He co-authored the influential books Modelling of Extremal Events for Insurance and Finance, Springer, 1997 [8] andQuantitative RiskManagement: Concepts, Techniques and Tools, Princeton UP, 2005, 2015 [14] and published over 180 scientific papers. Dr. Embrechts consults on issues in Quantitative Risk Management for financial institutions, insurance companies and international regulatory authorities.

Min-stable multivariate exponential (MSMVE) distributions constitute an important family of distributions, among others due to their relation to extreme-value distributions. Being true multivariate exponential models, they also represent a natural choicewhen modeling default times in credit portfolios. Despite being well-studied on an abstract level, the number of known parametric families is small. Furthermore, for most families only implicit stochastic representations are known. The present paper develops new parametric families of MSMVE distributions in arbitrary dimensions. Furthermore, a convenient stochastic representation is stated for such models, which is helpful with regard to sampling strategies.

Let (X,A) and (Y,B) be measurable spaces. Supposewe are given a probability α on A, a probability β on B and a probability μ on the product σ-field A ⊗ B. Is there a probability ν on A⊗B, with marginals α and β, such that ν ≪ μ or ν ~ μ ? Such a ν, provided it exists, may be useful with regard to equivalent martingale measures and mass transportation. Various conditions for the existence of ν are provided, distinguishing ν ≪ μ from ν ~ μ.

In this paper we present a forecasting method for time series using copula-based models for multivariate time series. We study how the performance of the predictions evolves when changing the strength of the different possible dependencies, as well as the structure of the dependence. We also look at the impact of the marginal distributions. The impact of estimation errors on the performance of the predictions is also considered. In all the experiments, we compare predictions from our multivariate method with predictions from the univariate version which has been introduced in the literature recently. To simplify implementation, a test of independence between univariate Markovian time series is proposed. Finally, we illustrate the methodology by a practical implementation with financial data.

Measuring association, or the lack of it, between variables plays an important role in a variety of research areas, including education,which is of our primary interest in this paper. Given, for example, student marks on several study subjects, we may for a number of reasons be interested in measuring the lack of comonotonicity (LOC) between the marks, which rarely follow monotone, let alone linear, patterns. For this purpose, in this paperwe explore a novel approach based on a LOCindex,which is related to, yet substantially different from, Eckhard Liebscher’s recently suggested coefficient of monotonically increasing dependence. To illustrate the new technique,we analyze a data-set of student marks on mathematics, reading and spelling.

A conditional variance is an indicator of the level of independence between two random variables. We exploit this intuitive relationship and define a measure v which is almost a measure of mutual complete dependence. Unsurprisingly, the measure attains its minimum value for many pairs of non-independent ran- dom variables. Adjusting the measure so as to make it invariant under all Borel measurable injective trans- formations, we obtain a copula-based measure of dependence v* satisfying A. Rényi’s postulates. Finally, we observe that every nontrivial convex combination of v and v* is a measure of mutual complete dependence.

We revisit Sklar’s Theorem and give another proof, primarily based on the use of right quantile functions. To this end we slightly generalise the distributional transform approach of Rüschendorf and facilitate some new results including a rigorous characterisation of an almost surely existing “left-invertibility” of distribution functions.

Subadditivity is the key property which distinguishes the popular risk measures Value-at-Risk and Expected Shortfall (ES). In this paper we offer seven proofs of the subadditivity of ES, some found in the literature and some not. One of the main objectives of this paper is to provide a general guideline for instructors to teach the subadditivity of ES in a course. We discuss the merits and suggest appropriate contexts for each proof.With different proofs, different important properties of ES are revealed, such as its dual representation, optimization properties, continuity, consistency with convex order, and natural estimators.

The approximation of a high level quantile or of the expectation over a high quantile (Value at Risk (VaR) or Tail Value at Risk (TVaR) in risk management) is crucial for the insurance industry.We propose a new method to estimate high level quantiles of sums of risks. It is based on the estimation of the ratio between the VaR (or TVaR) of the sum and the VaR (or TVaR) of the maximum of the risks. We show that using the distribution of the maximum to approximate the VaR is much better than using the marginal. Our method seems to work well in high dimension (100 and higher) and gives good results when approximating the VaR or TVaR in high levels on strongly dependent risks where at least one of the risks is heavy tailed.

For the Markov property of a multivariate process, a necessary and suficient condition on the multidimensional copula of the finite-dimensional distributions is given. This establishes that the Markov property is solely a property of the copula, i.e., of the dependence structure. This extends results by Darsow et al. [11] from dimension one to the multivariate case. In addition to the one-dimensional case also the spatial copula between the different dimensions has to be taken into account. Examples are also given.

We provide an explicit expression for the quantile of a mixture of two random variables. The result is useful for finding bounds on the Value-at-Risk of risky portfolios when only partial dependence information is available. This paper complements the work of [4].

The present paper is related to the study of asymmetry for copulas by introducing functionals based on different norms for continuous variables. In particular, we discuss some facts concerning asymmetry and we point out some flaws occurring in the recent literature dealing with this matter.

In Bivariate Frequency Analysis (BFA) of hydrological events, the study and quantification of the dependence between several variables of interest is commonly carried out through Pearson’s correlation (r), Kendall’s tau (τ) or Spearman’s rho (ρ). These measures provide an overall evaluation of the dependence. However, in BFA, the focus is on the extreme events which occur on the tail of the distribution. Therefore, these measures are not appropriate to quantify the dependence in the tail distribution. To quantify such a risk, in Extreme Value Analysis (EVA), a number of concepts and methods are available but are not appropriately employed in hydrological BFA. In the present paper, we study the tail dependence measures with their nonparametric estimations. In order to cover a wide range of possible cases, an application dealing with bivariate flood characteristics (peak flow, flood volume and event duration) is carried out on three gauging sites in Canada. Results show that r, τ and ρ are inadequate to quantify the extreme risk and to reflect the dependence characteristics in the tail. In addition, the upper tail dependence measure, commonly employed in hydrology, is shown not to be always appropriate especially when considered alone: it can lead to an overestimation or underestimation of the risk. Therefore, for an effective risk assessment, it is recommended to consider more than one tail dependence measure.

In the statistical literature, truncated distributions can be used for modeling real data. Due to error of measurement in truncated continuous data, choosing a crisp trimmed point caucuses a fault inference, so using fuzzy sets to define a threshold pointmay leads us more efficient results with respect to crisp thresholds. Arellano-Valle et al. [2] defined a selection distribution for analysis of truncated data with crisp threshold. In this paper, we define fuzzy multivariate selection distribution that is an extension of the selection distributions using fuzzy threshold. A practical data set with a fuzzy threshold point is considered to investigate the relationship between high blood pressure and BMI.

In this paper, a new supervised classification method dedicated to binary predictors is proposed. Its originality is to combine a model-based classification rule with similarity measures thanks to the introduction of new family of exponential kernels. Some links are established between existing similarity measures when applied to binary predictors. A new family of measures is also introduced to unify some of the existing literature. The performance of the new classification method is illustrated on two real datasets (verbal autopsy data and handwritten digit data) using 76 similarity measures.