Events

We develop efficient importance sampling estimators of certain rare event probabilities involving compound point processes. Our approach is based on the state-dependent techniques developed in (Dupuis & Wang 2004) and subsequent work. The design of the estimators departs from past literature to accommodate the point process setting. Namely, the state-dependent change of measure is updated not at event arrivals but over a deterministic time grid. Several common criteria for the optimality of the estimators are analyzed. Numerical results illustrate the advantages of the proposed...

This presentation summarizes the motivation, methodology, and initial test results of Equity Valuation Factor Models, an adaptation of popular multi-factor modeling techniques that seeks to explain the price and payoff of business ownership as a precursor to explaining equity returns. A departure from traditional returns-based models, the approach produces new information such as current factor prices that inform both risk & returns expectations, with a number of potential applications for real-world investment decisions.

Longevity risk is the risk that the promised recipient of lifetime cashflows ends up living much longer than originally anticipated, thus causing a shortfall in funding. A related risk, reimbursement risk is the risk that providers of health insurance face when new and expensive drugs are introduced and the insurer must cover their costs. Longevity and reimbursement risks are particularly acute in domains in which scientific breakthroughs can increase the speed of new drug development. An emerging asset class, research-backed obligations or RBOs (cf., Fernandez et al., 2012), provides a...

Factor models of security returns aim to decompose an asset return covariance matrix into a systematic component and a specific risk component. Standard approaches like PCA and maximum likelihood suffer from several drawbacks including a lack of robustness as well as their strict assumptions on the underlying model of returns. We survey some modern, robust methods to uniquely decompose a return covariance matrix into a low-rank component and a sparse component. Surprisingly, the identification of the unique low rank and sparse components is feasible under mild assumptions. We apply the...