Quantitative Finance

We prove a representation theorem for the Choquet integral model. The preference relation is defined on a two-dimensional heterogeneous product set X= X 1 × X 2 where elements of X 1 and X 2 are not necessarily comparable with each other. However, making such comparisons in a meaningful way is necessary for the construction of the Choquet integral (and any rank-dependent model). We construct the representation, study its uniqueness properties, and look at applications in multicriteria decision analysis, state-dependent utility theory, and social choice. Previous axiomatizations of this model, developed for decision making under uncertainty, relied heavily on the notion of comonotocity and that of a "constant act". However, that requires X to have a special structure, namely, all factors of this set must be identical. Our characterization does not assume commensurateness of criteria a priori, so defining comonotonicity becomes impossible.

In this paper, we extend the optimal securitisation model of Pagès [50] and Possamaï and Pagès [51] between an investor and a bank to a setting allowing both moral hazard and adverse selection. Following the recent approach to these problems of Cvitani?, Wan and Yang [14], we characterise explicitly and rigorously the so-called credible set of the continuation and temptation values of the bank, and obtain the value function of the investor as well as the optimal contracts through a recursive system of first-order variational inequalities with gradient constraints. We provide a detailed discussion of the properties of the optimal menu of contracts.

This work investigates the structure of basic industrial funds of cargo motor transport enterprises and peculiarities of the processes of their reproduction in the conditions of social and economic relations transformation. On the basis of statistic data of cargo-motor transport enterprises of Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Ternopil regions the author investigates the effect of production factors on the level of capital productivity of the basic funds, he determines reserves of its increase. The author motivates the necessity of adaptive qualitative changes in the management and realization of industrial potential and innovations activization in the sphere of cargo motor transportations, scientiffically grounded recommendations for efficiency increase of the usage of basic industrial funds of cargo motor transportation enterprises in modern economic conditions are provided in this work.

High dimensional vector autoregressive (VAR) models require a large number of parameters to be estimated and may suffer of inferential problems. We propose a new Bayesian nonparametric (BNP) Lasso prior (BNP-Lasso) for high-dimensional VAR models that can improve estimation efficiency and prediction accuracy. Our hierarchical prior overcomes overparametrization and overfitting issues by clustering the VAR coefficients into groups and by shrinking the coefficients of each group toward a common location. Clustering and shrinking effects induced by the BNP-Lasso prior are well suited for the extraction of causal networks from time series, since they account for some stylized facts in real-world networks, which are sparsity, communities structures and heterogeneity in the edges intensity. In order to fully capture the richness of the data and to achieve a better understanding of financial and macroeconomic risk, it is therefore crucial that the model used to extract network accounts for these stylized facts.

We develop an equilibrium framework that relaxes the standard assumption that people have a correctly-specified view of their environment. Each player is characterized by a (possibly misspecified) subjective model, which describes the set of feasible beliefs over payoff-relevant consequences as a function of actions. We introduce the notion of a Berk-Nash equilibrium: Each player follows a strategy that is optimal given her belief, and her belief is restricted to be the best fit among the set of beliefs she considers possible. The notion of best fit is formalized in terms of minimizing the Kullback-Leibler divergence, which is endogenous and depends on the equilibrium strategy profile. Standard solution concepts such as Nash equilibrium and self-confirming equilibrium constitute special cases where players have correctly-specified models. We provide a learning foundation for Berk-Nash equilibrium by extending and combining results from the statistics literature on misspecified learning and the economics literature on learning in games.

In this paper we characterise the propensity of big capital investments to systematically deliver poor outcomes as "fragility," a notion suggested by Nassim Taleb. A thing or system that is easily harmed by randomness is fragile. We argue that, contrary to their appearance, big capital investments break easily - i.e. deliver negative net present value - due to various sources of uncertainty that impact them during their long gestation, implementation, and operation periods. We do not refute the existence of economies of scale and scope. Instead we argue that big capital investments have a disproportionate (non-linear) exposure to uncertainties that deliver poor or negative returns above and beyond their economies of scale and scope. We further argue that to succeed, leaders of capital projects need to carefully consider where scaling pays off and where it does not. To automatically assume that "bigger is better," which is common in megaproject management, is a recipe for failure.

We measure elasticity of substitution between foreign and domestic commodities by two-point calibration such that the Armington aggregator can replicate the two temporally distant observations of market shares and prices. Along with the sectoral multifactor CES elasticities which we estimate by regression using a set of disaggregated linked input--output observations, we integrate domestic production of two countries, namely, Japan and the Republic of Korea, with bilateral trade models and construct a bilateral general equilibrium model. Finally, we make an assessment of a tariff elimination scheme between the two countries.

We propose a simple mechanism to facilitate the buying and selling of useful, bluntly honest information. The for-profit, arm's length knowledge exchange this mechanism enables may dramatically increase the pace of scientific progress.

In this paper, we map the process of business cycle synchronization across the European Union. We study this synchronization by applying wavelet techniques, particularly the cohesion measure with time-varying weights. This novel approach allows us to study the dynamic relationship among selected countries from a different perspective than the usual time-domain models. Analyzing monthly data from 1990 to 2014, we show an increasing co-movement of the Visegrad countries with the European Union after the countries began preparing for the accession to the European Union. With particular focus on the Visegrad countries we show that participation in a currency union possibly increases the co-movement. Furthermore, we find a high degree of synchronization in long-term horizons by analyzing the Visegrad Four and Southern European countries' synchronization with the core countries of the European Union.

We use the copula approach to study the structure of dependence between sell-side analysts' consensus recommendations and subsequent security returns, with a focus on asymmetric tail dependence. We match monthly vintages of I/B/E/S recommendations for the period January to December 2011 with excess security returns during six months following recommendation issue. Using a symmetrized Joe-Clayton Copula (SJC) model we find evidence to suggest that analysts can identify stocks that will substantially outperform, but not underperform relative to the market, and that their predictive ability is conditional on recommendation changes.