Marzia De Donno

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• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

This paper integrates liquidation costs into the pricing of American options in an arbitrage-free and otherwise frictionless market. The introduction of liquidation penalties changes the comparison between immediate payoff and continuation value for American option holders. Without these penalties, the continuation value is equal to the actual fund...

This paper studies the linkages between different aspects of preferences in the presence of risk increases of different degrees in the variance of consumption. We find that the effects on expected utility of risk increases in variance of consecutive degrees are in opposite directions. Applying this result to saving choice when either labour income...

We show conditions which ensure that the comparisons between risk aversion of different orders of two decision makers are related. In particular, we derive a condition ensuring that greater downside risk aversion implies greater risk aversion and a different condition ensuring that the opposite implication holds. We then generalize these results to...

The critical price S∗t of an American put option is the underlying stock price level that triggers its immediate optimal exercise. We provide a new perspective on the determination of the critical price near the option maturity T when the jump-adjusted dividend yield of the underlying stock is either greater than or weakly smaller than the riskfree...

We study relationships between different aspects of risk preferences. We show that, under the assumptions of non-satiation and bounded marginal utility, some additional conditions on the asymptotic behaviour of the indices of relative prudence and relative temperance ensure that risk aversion, prudence and temperance are equivalent. Similar conclus...

We suggest a new, parsimonious, method to fit financial data with a stable distribution. As a result of a stable fitting via maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), we find that some assets have similar values as stability indices, independently of the time interval considered. This fact can be exploited to pool the assets in groups and to choose a pa...

This paper reconsiders the conditions determining the optimal response of a decision maker in case of stochastic changes in multiplicative risks. In particular, we focus on an optimal portfolio choice where the return of the risky asset exhibits an Nth-degree risk increase. We provide two interpretations of the conditions analyzed. The first interp...

In this paper we study perpetual American call and put options in an exponential L\'evy model. We consider a negative effective discount rate which arises in a number of financial applications including stock loans and real options, where the strike price can potentially grow at a higher rate than the original discount factor. We show that in this...

In this paper we study perpetual American call and put options in an exponential L\'evy model. We consider a negative effective discount rate which arises in a number of financial applications including stock loans and real options, where the strike price can potentially grow at a higher rate than the original discount factor. We show that in this...

We study the optimal dynamic portfolio exposure to predictable default risk, taking inspiration from the search for yield by means of defaultable assets observed before the 2007–2008 crisis and in its aftermath. Under no arbitrage, default risk is compensated by an ‘yield pickup’ that can strongly attract aggressive investors via an investment-hori...

American option pricing is an important and engaging area of financial economics, particularly so in the presence of negative interest rates. Quanto options offer major international hedging/investment opportunities. We provide a comprehensive description of the optimal exercise policies associated with American quanto options. We show that a non-s...

A classical problem in Decision Theory is to represent a preference preorder among random variables. The fundamental Debreu's Theorem states that, in the discrete case, a preference satisfies the so-called Sure Thing Principle if and only if it can be represented by means of a function that can be additively decomposed along the states of the world...

Probabilistic modeling represents a subject spanning many branches of mathematics, economics, and computer science to connect pure mathematics with applied sciences. Operational research also relies on this connection to enable the improvement of business functions and decision making. Analyzing Risk through Probabilistic Modeling in Operations Re...

We develop envelope theorems for optimization problems in which the value function takes values in a general Banach lattice. We consider both the special case of a convex choice set and a concave objective function and the more general case case of an arbitrary choice set and a general objective function. We apply our results to discuss the existen...

We give an alternative duality-based proof to the solution of the expected utility maximization problem analyzed by Kim and Omberg. In so doing, we also provide an example of incomplete-market optimal investment problem for which the duality approach is conducive to an explicit solution.

This paper identifies a new sufficient condition for a prudent agent to have positive precautionary saving in the presence of labor income and interest rate risks of any size. We also provide three economic interpretations for this condition focusing respectively on the marginal effect of saving on total income variance, on the sign of the covarian...

Linear price systems, typically used to model “perfect” markets, are widely known not to accommodate most of the typical frictions featured in “actual” ones. Since some years, “proportional” frictions (taxes, bid-ask spreads, and so on) are modeled by means of sublinear price functionals, which proved to give a more “realistic” description. In this...

For the American put-call option symmetry in the Heston (1993) model, we provide a new and simple proof that is easily accessible to the general finance readership. We also characterize the link between the free-boundary of the American call and the free boundary of the symmetric American put.

We study the nonstandard optimal exercise policy associated with relevant capital investment options and with the prepayment option of widespread collateralized-borrowing contracts like the gold loan. Option exercise is optimally postponed not only when moneyness is insufficient, but also when it is excessive. We extend the classical optimal exerci...

We extend to the Heston stochastic volatility framework the parity result of McDonald and Schroder (1998) for American call and put options.

We derive envelope theorems for optimization problems in which the value function takes values in a general Banach lattice, and not necessarily in the real line. We impose no restriction whatsoever on the choice set. Our result extend therefore the ones of Milgrom and Segal (2002). We apply our results to discuss the existence of a well-defined not...

If the average risk-adjusted growth rate of the project's present value V overcomes the discount rate but is dominated by the average risk-adjusted growth rate of the cost I of entering the project, a non-standard double continuation region can arise: The firm waits to invest in the project if V is insufficiently above I as well as if V is comforta...

In the framework of the theory of stochastic integration with respect to a family of semimartingales depending on a continuous parameter, introduced by De Donno and Pratelli as a mathematical background to the theory of bond markets, we analyze a special class of integrands that preserve some nice properties of the finite-dimensional stochastic int...

If the average risk-adjusted growth rate of the project's present value V overcomes the discount rate but is dominated by the average risk-adjusted growth rate of the cost I of entering the project, a non-standard double continuation region can arise: The firm waits to invest in the project if V is insufficiently above I as well as if V is comforta...

Let S be a local martingale with values in IRd, and let H be a d-dimensional predictable process, such that the stochastic integral H ? S does exist: if the process (H ? S)t is uniformly bounded from below by a constant (or, more in general, by an integrable random variable), then H ? S is a local martingale, hence a supermartingale.

AbstractWe consider the general class of discrete-time, finite-horizon intertemporal asset pricing models in which preferences for consumption at the intermediate dates are allowed to be state-dependent, satiated, non-convex and discontinuous, and the information structure is not required to be generated by a Markov process of state variables. We s...

We introduce a theory of stochastic integration with respect to a family of semimartingales depending on a continuous parameter, as a mathematical background to the theory of bond markets. We apply our results to the problem of super-replication and utility maximization from terminal wealth in a bond market. Finally, we compare our approach to thos...

We study the problems of super-replication and utility maximization from terminal wealth in a semimartingale model with countably many assets. After introducing a suitable definition of admissible strategy, we characterize superreplicable contingent claims in terms of martingale measures. Utility maximization problems are then studied with the conv...

We investigate the term structure of zero coupon bonds, in the case where the forward rate evolves as a Wiener sheet. We introduce a defi-nition of stochastic integral with respect to a continuous semimartingale with values in the set of continuous functions and characterize the dynamics of the zero coupon bonds. We also define a notion of generali...

We propose here a theory of cylindrical stochastic integration, recently developed by Mikulevicius and Rozovskii, as mathematical background to the theory of bond markets. In this theory, since there is a continuum of securities, it seems natural to define a portfolio as a measure on maturities. However, it turns out that this set of strategies is...

We study completeness in large financial markets, namely markets containing countably many assets. We investigate the relationship between asymptotic completeness in the global market and completeness in the finite submarkets, under a no-arbitrage assumption. We also suggest a way to approximate a replicating strategy in the large market by finite-...

Without Abstract

We study the problem of utility maximization from termi-nal wealth in a semimartingale model with countably many assets. After discussing in this context the appropriate notion of admissible strategy, we give a characterization result for the superreplication price of a contingent claim. Utility maximization problems are then studied with the conve...

Given a class A of non-satiated investors with continuous and convex preferences, a one-period security market is viable if some agent in A finds an optimal trade. Harrison and Kreps (1979) show that viability is equivalent to the existence of linear pricing rules. Our first contribution is to extend Harrison and Kreps' result to the case of intert...