Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Conditional risk measure'

This Thesis focuses on two main topics. Firstly, we introduce and analyze the novel concept of Systemic Optimal Risk Transfer Equilibrium (SORTE), and we progressively generalize it (i) to a multivariate setup and (ii) to a dynamic (conditional) setting. Additionally we investigate its relation to a recently introduced concept of Systemic Risk Measures (SRM). We present Conditional Systemic Risk Measures and study their properties, dual representation and possible interpretations of the associated allocations as equilibria in the sense of SORTE. On a parallel line of work, we develop a duality for the Entropy Martingale Optimal Transport problem and provide applications to problems of nonlinear pricing-hedging. The mathematical techniques we exploit are mainly borrowed from functional and convex analysis, as well as probability theory. More specifically, apart from a wide range of classical results from functional analysis, we extensively rely on Fenchel-Moreau-Rockafellar type conjugacy results, Minimax Theorems, theory of Orlicz spaces, compactness results in the spirit of Komlós Theorem. At the same time, mathematical results concerning utility maximization theory (existence of optima for primal and dual problems, just to mention an example) and optimal transport theory are widely exploited. The notion of SORTE is inspired by the Bühlmann's classical Equilibrium Risk Exchange (H. Bühlmann, "The general economic premium principle", Astin Bulletin, 1984). In both the Bühlmann and the SORTE definition, each agent is behaving rationally by maximizing his/her expected utility given a budget constraint. The two approaches differ by the budget constraints. In Bühlmann's definition the vector that assigns the budget constraint is given a priori. In the SORTE approach, on the contrary, the budget constraint is endogenously determined by solving a systemic utility maximization problem. SORTE gives priority to the systemic aspects of the problem, in order to first optimize the overall systemic performance, rather than to individual rationality. Single agents' preferences are, however, taken into account by the presence of individual optimization problems. The two aspects are simultaneously considered via an optimization problem for a value function given by summation of single agents' utilities. After providing a financial and theoretical justification for this new idea, in this research sufficient general assumptions that guarantee existence, uniqueness, and Pareto optimality of such a SORTE are presented. Once laid the theoretical foundation for the newly introduced SORTE, this Thesis proceeds in extending such a notion to the case when the value function to be optimized has two components, one being the sum of the single agents' utility functions, as in the aforementioned case of SORTE, the other consisting of a truly systemic component. This marks the progress from SORTE to Multivariate Systemic Optimal Risk Transfer Equilibrium (mSORTE). Technically, the extension of SORTE to the new setup requires developing a theory for multivariate utility functions and selecting at the same time a suitable framework for the duality theory. Conceptually, this more general setting allows us to introduce and study a Nash Equilibrium property of the optimizers. Existence, uniqueness, Pareto optimality and the Nash Equilibrium property of the newly defined mSORTE are proved in this Thesis. Additionally, it is shown how mSORTE is in fact a proper generalization, and covers both from the conceptual and the mathematical point of view the notion of SORTE. Proceeding further in the analysis, the relations between the concepts of mSORTE and SRM are investigated in this work. The notion of SRM we start from was introduced in the papers "A unified approach to systemic risk measures via acceptance sets" (Math. Finance, 2019) and "On fairness of systemic risk measures" (Finance Stoch., 2020) by F. Biagini, J.-P. Fouque, M. Frittelli, and T. Meyer-Brandis. SRM of Biagini et al. are generalized in this Thesis to a dynamic (namely conditional) setting, adding also a systemic, multivariate term in the threshold functions that Biagini et al. consider in their papers. The dynamic version of mSORTE is introduced, and it is proved that the optimal allocations of dynamic SRM, together with the corresponding fair pricing measures, yield a dynamic mSORTE. This in particular remains true if conditioning is taken with respect to the trivial sigma algebra, which is tantamount to working in the non-dynamic setting covered in Biagini et al. for SRM, and in the previous parts of our work for mSORTE. The case of exponential utility functions is thoroughly examined, and the explicit formulas we obtain for this specific choice of threshold functions allow for providing a time consistency property for allocations, dynamic SRM and dynamic mSORTE. The last part of this Thesis is devoted to a conceptually separate topic. Nonetheless, a clear mathematical link between the previous work and the one we are to describe is established by the use of common techniques. A duality between a novel Entropy Martingale Optimal Transport (EMOT) problem (D) and an associated optimization problem (P) is developed. In (D) the approach taken in Liero et al. (M. Liero, A. Mielke, and G. Savaré, "Optimal entropy-transport problems and a new Hellinger-Kantorovich distance between positive measures", Inventiones mathematicae, 2018) serves as a basis for adding the constraint, typical of Martingale Optimal Transport (MOT) theory, that the infimum of the cost functional is taken over martingale probability measures, instead of finite positive measures, as in Liero et al.. The Problem (D) differs from the corresponding problem in Liero et al. not only by the martingale constraint, but also because we admit less restrictive penalization terms D, which may not have a divergence formulation. In Problem (P) the objective functional, associated via Fenchel conjugacy to the terms D, is not any more linear, as in Optimal Transport or in MOT. This leads to a novel optimization problem which also has a clear financial interpretation as a non linear subhedging value. Our results in this Thesis establish a novel nonlinear robust pricing-hedging duality in financial mathematics, which covers a wide range of known robust results in its generality. The research for this Thesis resulted in the production of the following works: F. Biagini, A. Doldi, J.-P. Fouque, M. Frittelli, and T. Meyer-Brandis, "Systemic optimal risk transfer equilibrium", Mathematics and Financial Economics, 2021; A. Doldi and M. Frittelli, "Multivariate Systemic Optimal Risk Transfer Equilibrium", Preprint: arXiv:1912.12226, 2019; A. Doldi and M. Frittelli, "Conditional Systemic Risk Measures", Preprint: arXiv:2010.11515, 2020; A. Doldi and M. Frittelli, "Entropy Martingale Optimal Transport and Nonlinear Pricing-Hedging Duality", Preprint: arXiv:2005.12572, 2020.

In this thesis the performances of different approximations are compared for a standard actuarial and financial problem: the estimation of quantiles and conditional tail expectations of the final value of a series of discrete cash flows. To calculate the risk measures such as quantiles and Conditional Tail Expectations, one needs the distribution function of the final wealth. The final value of a series of discrete payments in the considered model is the sum of dependent lognormal random variables. Unfortunately, its distribution function cannot be determined analytically. Thus usually one has to use time-consuming Monte Carlo simulations. Computational time still remains a serious drawback of Monte Carlo simulations, thus several analytical techniques for approximating the distribution function of final wealth are proposed in the frame of this thesis. These are the widely used moment-matching approximations and innovative comonotonic approximations. Moment-matching methods approximate the unknown distribution function by a given one in such a way that some characteristics (in the present case the first two moments) coincide. The ideas of two well-known approximations are described briefly. Analytical formulas for valuing quantiles and Conditional Tail Expectations are derived for both approximations. Recently, a large group of scientists from Catholic University Leuven in Belgium has derived comonotonic upper and comonotonic lower bounds for sums of dependent lognormal random variables. These bounds are bounds in the terms of "convex order". In order to provide the theoretical background for comonotonic approximations several fundamental ordering concepts such as stochastic dominance, stop-loss and convex order and some important relations between them are introduced. The last two concepts are closely related. Both stochastic orders express which of two random variables is the "less dangerous/more attractive" one. The central idea of comonotonic upper bound approximation is to replace the original sum, presenting final wealth, by a new sum, for which the components have the same marginal distributions as the components in the original sum, but with "more dangerous/less attractive" dependence structure. The upper bound, or saying mathematically, convex largest sum is obtained when the components of the sum are the components of comonotonic random vector. Therefore, fundamental concepts of comonotonicity theory which are important for the derivation of convex bounds are introduced. The most wide-spread examples of comonotonicity which emerge in financial context are described. In addition to the upper bound a lower bound can be derived as well. This provides one with a measure of the reliability of the upper bound. The lower bound approach is based on the technique of conditioning. It is obtained by applying Jensen's inequality for conditional expectations to the original sum of dependent random variables. Two slightly different version of conditioning random variable are considered in the context of this thesis. They give rise to two different approaches which are referred to as comonotonic lower bound and comonotonic "maximal variance" lower bound approaches. Special attention is given to the class of distortion risk measures. It is shown that the quantile risk measure as well as Conditional Tail Expectation (under some additional conditions) belong to this class. It is proved that both risk measures being under consideration are additive for a sum of comonotonic random variables, i.e. quantile and Conditional Tail Expectation for a comonotonic upper and lower bounds can easily be obtained by summing the corresponding risk measures of the marginals involved. A special subclass of distortion risk measures which is referred to as class of concave distortion risk measures is also under consideration. It is shown that quantile risk measure is not a concave distortion risk measure while Conditional Tail Expectation (under some additional conditions) is a concave distortion risk measure. A theoretical justification for the fact that "concave" Conditional Tail Expectation preserves convex order relation between random variables is given. It is shown that this property does not necessarily hold for the quantile risk measure, as it is not a concave risk measure. Finally, the accuracy and efficiency of two moment-matching, comonotonic upper bound, comonotonic lower bound and "maximal variance" lower bound approximations are examined for a wide range of parameters by comparing with the results obtained by Monte Carlo simulation. It is justified by numerical results that, generally, in the current situation lower bound approach outperforms other methods. Moreover, the preservation of convex order relation between the convex bounds for the final wealth by Conditional Tail Expectation is demonstrated by numerical results. It is justified numerically that this property does not necessarily hold true for the quantile.

Ziel dieser Dissertation ist es, den Begriff des Risikos unter den Aspekten seiner Quantifizierung durch robuste Darstellungen zu untersuchen. In einem ersten Teil wird Risiko anhand Kontext-Invarianter Merkmale betrachtet: Diversifizierung und Monotonie. Wir führen die drei Schlüsselkonzepte, Risikoordnung, Risikomaß und Risikoakzeptanzfamilen ein, und studieren deren eins-zu-eins Beziehung. Unser Hauptresultat stellt eine eindeutige duale robuste Darstellung jedes unterhalbstetigen Risikomaßes auf topologischen Vektorräumen her. Wir zeigen auch automatische Stetigkeitsergebnisse und robuste Darstellungen für Risikomaße auf diversen Arten von konvexen Mengen. Diese Herangehensweise lässt bei der Wahl der konvexen Menge viel Spielraum, und erlaubt damit eine Vielfalt von Interpretationen von Risiko: Modellrisiko im Falle von Zufallsvariablen, Verteilungsrisiko im Falle von Lotterien, Abdiskontierungsrisiko im Falle von Konsumströmen... Diverse Beispiele sind dann in diesen verschiedenen Situationen explizit berechnet (Sicherheitsäquivalent, ökonomischer Risikoindex, VaR für Lotterien, "variational preferences"...). Im zweiten Teil, betrachten wir Präferenzordnungen, die möglicherweise zusätzliche Informationen benötigen, um ausgedrückt zu werden. Hierzu führen wir einen axiomatischen Rahmen in Form von bedingten Präferenzordungen ein, die lokal mit der Information kompatibel sind. Dies erlaubt die Konstruktion einer bedingten numerischen Darstellung. Wir erhalten eine bedingte Variante der von Neumann und Morgenstern Darstellung für messbare stochastische Kerne und erweitern dieses Ergebnis zur einer bedingten Version der "variational preferences". Abschließend, klären wir das Zusammenpiel zwischen Modellrisiko und Verteilungsrisiko auf der axiomatischen Ebene.
The goal of this thesis is the conceptual study of risk and its quantification via robust representations. We concentrate in a first part on context invariant features related to this notion: diversification and monotonicity. We introduce and study the general properties of three key concepts, risk order, risk measure and risk acceptance family and their one-to-one relations. Our main result is a uniquely characterized dual robust representation of lower semicontinuous risk orders on topological vector space. We also provide automatic continuity and robust representation results on specific convex sets. This approach allows multiple interpretation of risk depending on the setting: model risk in the case of random variables, distributional risk in the case of lotteries, discounting risk in the case of consumption streams... Various explicit computations in those different settings are then treated (economic index of riskiness, certainty equivalent, VaR on lotteries, variational preferences...). In the second part, we consider preferences which might require additional information in order to be expressed. We provide a mathematical framework for this idea in terms of preorders, called conditional preference orders, which are locally compatible with the available information. This allows us to construct conditional numerical representations of conditional preferences. We obtain a conditional version of the von Neumann and Morgenstern representation for measurable stochastic kernels and extend then to a conditional version of the variational preferences. We finally clarify the interplay between model risk and distributional risk on the axiomatic level.

There is a little doubt that, for a decade, risk measurement has become one of the most important topics in finance. Indeed, it is natural to observe such a development, since in the last ten years, huge amounts of financial transactions ended with severe losses due to severe convulsions in financial markets. Value at risk, as the most widely used risk measure, fails to quantify the risk of a position accurately in many situations. For this reason a number of consistent risk measures have been introduced in the literature. The main aim of this study is to present and compare coherent, convex, conditional convex and some other risk measures both in theoretical and practical settings.

This master's thesis studies portfolio optimization using linear programming algorithms. The contribution of this thesis is an extension of the convex framework for portfolio optimization with Conditional Value-at-Risk, introduced by Rockafeller and Uryasev. The extended framework considers risk measures in this thesis belonging to the intersecting classes of coherent risk measures and distortion risk measures, which are known as coherent distortion risk measures. The considered risk measures belonging to this class are the Conditional Value-at-Risk, the Wang Transform, the Block Maxima and the Dual Block Maxima measures. The extended portfolio optimization framework is applied to a reference portfolio consisting of stocks, options and a bond index. All assets are from the Swedish market. The returns of the assets in the reference portfolio are modelled with elliptical distribution and normal copulas with asymmetric marginal return distributions. The portfolio optimization framework is a simulation-based framework that measures the risk using the simulated scenarios from the assumed portfolio distribution model. To model the return data with asymmetric distributions, the tails of the marginal distributions are fitted with generalized Pareto distributions, and the dependence structure between the assets are captured using a normal copula. The result obtained from the optimizations is compared to different distributional return assumptions of the portfolio and the four risk measures. A Markowitz solution to the problem is computed using the mean average deviation as the risk measure. The solution is the benchmark solution which optimal solutions using the coherent distortion risk measures are compared to. The coherent distortion risk measures have the tractable property of being able to assign user-defined weights to different parts of the loss distribution and hence value increasing loss severities as greater risks. The user-defined loss weighting property and the asymmetric return distribution models are used to find optimal portfolios that account for extreme losses. An important finding of this project is that optimal solutions for asset returns simulated from asymmetric distributions are associated with greater risks, which is a consequence of more accurate modelling of distribution tails. Furthermore, weighting larger losses with increasingly larger weights show that the portfolio risk is greater, and a safer position is taken.
Denna masteruppsats behandlar portföljoptimering med linjära programmeringsalgoritmer. Bidraget av uppsatsen är en utvidgning av det konvexa ramverket för portföljoptimering med Conditional Value-at-Risk, som introducerades av Rockafeller och Uryasev. Det utvidgade ramverket behandlar riskmått som tillhör en sammansättning av den koherenta riskmåttklassen och distortions riksmåttklassen. Denna klass benämns som koherenta distortionsriskmått. De riskmått som tillhör denna klass och behandlas i uppsatsen och är Conditional Value-at-Risk, Wang Transformen, Block Maxima och Dual Block Maxima måtten. Det utvidgade portföljoptimeringsramverket appliceras på en referensportfölj bestående av aktier, optioner och ett obligationsindex från den Svenska aktiemarknaden. Tillgångarnas avkastningar, i referens portföljen, modelleras med både elliptiska fördelningar och normal-copula med asymmetriska marginalfördelningar. Portföljoptimeringsramverket är ett simuleringsbaserat ramverk som mäter risk baserat på scenarion simulerade från fördelningsmodellen som antagits för portföljen. För att modellera tillgångarnas avkastningar med asymmetriska fördelningar modelleras marginalfördelningarnas svansar med generaliserade Paretofördelningar och en normal-copula modellerar det ömsesidiga beroendet mellan tillgångarna. Resultatet av portföljoptimeringarna jämförs sinsemellan för de olika portföljernas avkastningsantaganden och de fyra riskmåtten. Problemet löses även med Markowitz optimering där "mean average deviation" används som riskmått. Denna lösning kommer vara den "benchmarklösning" som kommer jämföras mot de optimala lösningarna vilka beräknas i optimeringen med de koherenta distortionsriskmåtten. Den speciella egenskapen hos de koherenta distortionsriskmåtten som gör det möjligt att ange användarspecificerade vikter vid olika delar av förlustfördelningen och kan därför värdera mer extrema förluster som större risker. Den användardefinerade viktningsegenskapen hos riskmåtten studeras i kombination med den asymmetriska fördelningsmodellen för att utforska portföljer som tar extrema förluster i beaktande. En viktig upptäckt är att optimala lösningar till avkastningar som är modellerade med asymmetriska fördelningar är associerade med ökad risk, vilket är en konsekvens av mer exakt modellering av tillgångarnas fördelningssvansar. En annan upptäckt är, om större vikter läggs på högre förluster så ökar portföljrisken och en säkrare portföljstrategi antas.

The last two years have seen the most volatile financial markets for decades with steep losses in asset values and a deteriorating world economy. The insolvency of several banks and their negative impact on the economy has led to criticism of their risk management systems for not being adequate and lacking foresight. This thesis will study the performance of two broadly adopted portfolio risk measures before and during the current financial turbulence to examine their accuracy and reliability. The study will be carried out on a case portfolio consisting of American and European fixed income and equity. The portfolio uses a dynamic asset allocation scheme to maximize the ratio between expected return and portfolio risk. The market risk of the portfolio will be calculated on a daily basis using both Value-at-Risk (VaR) and expected shortfall (ES) in a Monte Carlo framework. These risk measures are then compared with prior measurements and the actual loss over the period. The results from the study indicate that the implemented risk model do not give totally reliable estimates, with more frequent and larger real losses than predicted. Nevertheless, the study sees a significant worsening in the performance of the risk measures during the current financial crisis from June 2007 to December 2008 compared with the previous years. This thesis argues that VaR and ES are useful risk measures, but that users should be well aware of the pitfalls in the underlying models and take appropriate precautions.

Au cours des dernières années, des changements importants dans le domaine des assurances et des finances attirent de plus en plus l’attention sur la nécessité d’élaborer un cadre normalisé pour la mesure des risques. Récemment, il y a eu un intérêt croissant de la part des experts en assurance sur l’utilisation de l’espérance conditionnelle des pertes (CTE) parce qu’elle partage des propriétés considérées comme souhaitables et applicables dans diverses situations. En particulier, il répond aux exigences d’une mesure de risque “cohérente”, selon Artzner [2]. Cette thèse représente des contributions à l’inférence statistique en développant des outils, basés sur la convergence des intégrales fonctionnelles, pour l’estimation de la CTE qui présentent un intérêt considérable pour la science actuarielle. Tout d’abord, nous développons un outil permettant l’estimation de la moyenne conditionnelle E[X|X > x], ensuite nous construisons des estimateurs de la CTE, développons la théorie asymptotique nécessaire pour ces estimateurs, puis utilisons la théorie pour construire des intervalles de confiance. Pour la première fois, l’approche de bootstrap non paramétrique est explorée dans cette thèse en développant des nouveaux résultats applicables à la valeur à risque (VaR) et à la CTE. Des études de simulation illustrent la performance de la technique de bootstrap.

An implicit measure of early-life family conditions was created to help address potential biases in responses to self-reported questionnaires of early-life family environments. We investigated whether a computerized affect attribution paradigm designed to capture implicit, affective responses (anger, fear, warmth) regarding early-life family environments was a) stable over time, b) associated with self-reports of childhood family environments, c) able to predict adult psychosocial profiles (perceived social support, heightened vigilance), and d) able to predict adult cardiovascular risk (blood pressure) either alone or in conjunction with a measure of early-life socioeconomic status. Two studies were conducted to examine reliability and validity of the affect attribution paradigm (Study 1, N = 94) and associated adult psychosocial outcomes and cardiovascular risk (Study 2, N = 122). Responses on the affect attribution paradigm showed significant correlations over a 6-month period, and were moderately associated with self-reports of childhood family environments. Greater attributed negative affect about early-life family conditions predicted lower levels of current perceived social support and heightened vigilance in adulthood. Attributed negative affect also interacted with early-life socioeconomic status to marginally predict resting systolic blood pressure, such that those individuals high in early-life SES but who had implicit negative affect attributed to early-life family conditions had SBP levels that were as high as individuals low in early-life SES. Implicit measures of early-life family conditions are a useful approach for assessing the psychosocial nature of early-life environments and linking them to adult psychosocial and physiological health profiles.

Motivated by many financial insights, we provide dual representation theorems for quasiconvex conditional maps defined on vector space or modules and taking values in sets of random variables. These results match the standard dual representation for quasiconvex real valued maps provided by Penot and Volle. As a financial byproduct, we apply this theory to the case of dynamic certainty equivalents and conditional risk measures.

In this thesis we mainly focused on the usage of the Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) in risk management and on the pricing of the arithmetic average basket and Asian options in the Black-Scholes framework via a new log-normal sum approximation method. Firstly, we worked on the linearization procedure of the CVaR proposed by Rockafellar and Uryasev. We constructed an optimization problem with the objective of maximizing the expected return under a CVaR constraint. Due to possible intermediate payments we assumed, we had to deal with a re-investment problem which turned the originally one-period problem into a multiperiod one. For solving this multi-period problem, we used the linearization procedure of CVaR and developed an iterative scheme based on linear optimization. Our numerical results obtained from the solution of this problem uncovered some surprising weaknesses of the use of Value-at-Risk (VaR) and CVaR as a risk measure. In the next step, we extended the problem by including the liabilities and the quantile hedging to obtain a reasonable problem construction for managing the liquidity risk. In this problem construction the objective of the investor was assumed to be the maximization of the probability of liquid assets minus liabilities bigger than a threshold level, which is a type of quantile hedging. Since the quantile hedging is not a perfect hedge, a non-zero probability of having a liability value higher than the asset value exists. To control the amount of the probable deficient amount we used a CVaR constraint. In the Black-Scholes framework, the solution of this problem necessitates to deal with the sum of the log-normal distributions. It is known that sum of the log-normal distributions has no closed-form representation. We introduced a new, simple and highly efficient method to approximate the sum of the log-normal distributions using shifted log-normal distributions. The method is based on a limiting approximation of the arithmetic mean by the geometric mean. Using our new approximation method we reduced the quantile hedging problem to a simpler optimization problem. Our new log-normal sum approximation method could also be used to price some options in the Black-Scholes model. With the help of our approximation method we derived closed-form approximation formulas for the prices of the basket and Asian options based on the arithmetic averages. Using our approximation methodology combined with the new analytical pricing formulas for the arithmetic average options, we obtained a very efficient performance for Monte Carlo pricing in a control variate setting. Our numerical results show that our control variate method outperforms the well-known methods from the literature in some cases.

Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons à l'estimation de modèles conditionnellement hétéroscédastiques (CH) sous différentes hypothèses. Dans une première partie, en modifiant l'hypothèse d'identification usuelle du modèle, nous définissions un estimateur de quasi-maximum de vraisemblance (QMV) non gaussien et nous montrons que, sous certaines conditions, cet estimateur est plus efficace que l'estimateur du quasi maximum de vraisemblance gaussien. Nous étudions dans une deuxième partie l'inférence d'un modèle CH dans le cas où le processus des innovations est distribué selon une loi alpha stable. Nous établissons la consistance et la normalité asymptotique de l'estimateur du maximum de vraisemblance. La loi alpha stable n'apparaissant que comme loi limite, nous étudions ensuite le comportement de ce même estimateur dans le cas où la loi du processus des innovations n'est plus une loi alpha stable mais est dans le domaine d'attraction d'une telle loi. Dans la dernière partie, nous étudions l'estimation d'un modèle GARCH lorsque le processus générateur de données est un modèle CH dont les coefficients sont sujets à des changements de régimes markoviens. Nous montrons que cet estimateur, dans un cadre mal spécifié, converge vers une pseudo vraie valeur et nous établissons sa loi asymptotique. Nous étudions cet estimateur lorsque le processus observé est stationnaire mais nous détaillons également ses propriétés asymptotiques lorsque ce processus est non stationnaire et explosif. Par des simulations, nous étudions les capacités prédictives du modèle GARCH mal spécifié. Nous déterminons ainsi la robustesse de ce modèle et de l'estimateur du QMV à une erreur de spécification de la volatilité.

The aim of this thesis is to present new results concerning duality in scalar optimization. We show how the theory can be applied to optimization problems arising in the theory of risk measures, portfolio optimization and machine learning. First we give some notations and preliminaries we need within the thesis. After that we recall how the well-known Lagrange dual problem can be derived by using the general perturbation theory and give some generalized interior point regularity conditions used in the literature. Using these facts we consider some special scalar optimization problems having a composed objective function and geometric (and cone) constraints. We derive their duals, give strong duality results and optimality condition using some regularity conditions. Thus we complete and/or extend some results in the literature especially by using the mentioned regularity conditions, which are weaker than the classical ones. We further consider a scalar optimization problem having single chance constraints and a convex objective function. We also derive its dual, give a strong duality result and further consider a special case of this problem. Thus we show how the conjugate duality theory can be used for stochastic programming problems and extend some results given in the literature. In the third chapter of this thesis we consider convex risk and deviation measures. We present some more general measures than the ones given in the literature and derive formulas for their conjugate functions. Using these we calculate some dual representation formulas for the risk and deviation measures and correct some formulas in the literature. Finally we proof some subdifferential formulas for measures and risk functions by using the facts above. The generalized deviation measures we introduced in the previous chapter can be used to formulate some portfolio optimization problems we consider in the fourth chapter. Their duals, strong duality results and optimality conditions are derived by using the general theory and the conjugate functions, respectively, given in the second and third chapter. Analogous calculations are done for a portfolio optimization problem having single chance constraints using the general theory given in the second chapter. Thus we give an application of the duality theory in the well-developed field of portfolio optimization. We close this thesis by considering a general Support Vector Machines problem and derive its dual using the conjugate duality theory. We give a strong duality result and necessary as well as sufficient optimality conditions. By considering different cost functions we get problems for Support Vector Regression and Support Vector Classification. We extend the results given in the literature by dropping the assumption of invertibility of the kernel matrix. We use a cost function that generalizes the well-known Vapnik's ε-insensitive loss and consider the optimization problems that arise by using this. We show how the general theory can be applied for a real data set, especially we predict the concrete compressive strength by using a special Support Vector Regression problem.

Os profissionais do controle de tráfego aéreo desenvolvem uma função de importância para a sociedade. Neste sentido, realizou-se estudo com objetivo de analisar as representações sociais dos controladores de tráfego aéreo sobre sua saúde e sobre as práticas de saúde desenvolvidas pelo Sistema de Saúde da Aeronáutica, tendo em vista uma possível contribuição para a adoção de práticas de promoção e proteção da saúde e segurança da aviação. Desenvolveu-se um estudo qualitativo, utilizando-se a técnica do Discurso do Sujeito Coletivo (DSC), por meio de entrevistas semi-estruturadas, com 12 participantes do Controle de Aproximação da Área Terminal São Paulo. Foi possível caracterizar, em primeiro lugar, o funcionamento do Controle Tráfego Aéreo neste Terminal e, em segundo lugar, conhecer as representações sociais destes trabalhadores sobre o trabalho no Controle de Tráfego; a experiência com o risco no cotidiano do trabalho; as relações do controlador com a hierarquia militar; os rumos possíveis para o trabalho no controle de tráfego aéreo e das práticas de saúde destes trabalhadores. Pôde-se observar a existência de dificuldades em se produzir qualquer alteração de ordem sistêmica e administrativa. O aspecto da tecnologia aparece como relevante e, em muitas situações, as falhas no sistema são apontadas como geradoras de risco. No entanto, tornou-se evidente que o controle de tráfego aéreo é muito mais um problema social e institucional, uma vez que existem interesses diversos dos diferentes atores envolvidos: trabalhadores, aeronáutica, companhias aéreas e usuários. A incorporação do saber do trabalhador por meio da metodologia do DSC permitiu o acesso a uma cultura organizacional, qualitativamente diferente da “coletividade matemática”, e que deve ser conhecida antes de qualquer intervenção no campo da Saúde do Trabalhador.
Air traffic controllers develop a real important activity for society. In this sense, the present study analyses the air traffic controllers social representations about their health and the health practices offered by the Aeronautic Health System, aiming at contributing for the decisions on adoption of practices for promoting and protecting aviation health and safety. This qualitative study, based on the Collective Subject Discourses (DSC), was carried out usure semi-structured interviews with 12 participants working at “Approximation Control Area of São Paulo Terminal”. The research allowed the characterisation of the work context and of the workers’ social representations about the work control, their experiences with daily risk, health conditions and practices, relationship with the military hierarchy and possible directions for the air traffic control. The study showed a great difficulty of implementing any system or administrative changes. Technology is a relevant aspect pointed as generating risk in many occurrences of system failure. Nevertheless, the air traffic control seems to be much more a social and institutional problem. There are several other different interests of the actors involved: workers, aeronautic, air companies and users. The DSC methodology allowed us to approach an organisational culture qualitatively different from other quantitative studies, and that should be known before any intervention in the work health field.

碩士
國立虎尾科技大學
經營管理研究所
96
Since the return volatility of financial assets plays an important role on the performance of portfolios, investors can improve the performance of their portfolios by controlling the volatility of their assets. Therefore, this study examines the influence of the risk estimation on the performance of portfolios. The data used in this study consists of daily returns of the 150 listed companies in the TSEC Taiwan 50 index and TSEC Taiwan Mid-Cap 100 Index and spans from June, 2003 to April, 2008. Under the framework of the fixed window approach, three risk measures, namely the equally weighted moving average model, the exponentially weighted moving average model, and the bootstrap simulation model, are employed to predict the Value-at-Risk and the Conditional Value-at-Risk of the portfolios. After solving the minimization problems of the Conditional Value-at-Risk of the portfolios, the optimal portfolios could be held and their performances could then be compared. The results of this study are shown as follows: (1) All of the optimal portfolios built by minimizing the Conditional Value-at-Risk, which are calculated by different risk measures, have better performance than that of the Taiwan Stock Exchange Capitalization Weighted Stock Index. (2) The estimates of the Value-at-Risk and Conditional Value-at-Risk predicted by different risk measures have crucial influence on the performance of the optimal asset allocation. When the confidence level is 95%, the bootstrap simulation model seems to have the best performance in the risk measures. In case of the 99% confidence level, equally weighted moving average model is the best one among the risk measures.

碩士
國立政治大學
金融研究所
95
In this paper we address the pricing issues of CDO of CDOs. Underlying the conditional indepdence assumption we use the factor copula approach to characterize the correlation of defaults events. We provide an efficient recursive algorithm that constructs the loss distribution. Our algorithm accounts for the number of defaults, the location of defaults among inner CDOs, and in addition the degree of overlapping between inner CDOs. Our algorithm is a natural extension of the probability bucketing method of Hull and White (2004). We analyze the sensitivity of different parameters on the tranche spreads of a CDO-squared, and in order to characterize the risk-reward profiles of CDO-squared tranches, we introduces appropriate risk measures that quantify the degree of overlapping among the inner CDOs. Hull and White (2004) presents a recursive scheme known as probability bucketing approach to construct conditional loss distribution of CDO. However, this approach is insufficient to capture the complexities of CDO². In the case of the modeling of CDO, we are concerned for the probabilities of different number of defaults upon a time horizon t, e.g., the probabilities of 3 defaults happened within a year. With the mentioned probabilities, we can then calculate the expected loss within the time horizon, which enables us to figure out the spreads of CDO. However, in the modeling of CDO², an appropriate valuation should be able to overcome two more difficulties: (1) the overlapping structure of the underlying CDOs, and (2) the location where defaults happened, in order to get the fair spreads of CDO².

Hedging has been one of the most important topics in finance. How to effectively hedge the exposed risk draws significant interest from both academicians and practitioners. In a complete financial market, every contingent claim can be hedged perfectly. In an incomplete market, the investor can eliminate his risk exposure by superhedging. However, both perfect hedging and superhedging usually call for a high cost. In some situations, the investor does not have enough capital or is not willing to spend that much to achieve a zero risk position. This brings us to the topic of partial hedging. In this thesis, we establish the risk measure based partial hedging model and study the optimal partial hedging strategies under various criteria. First, we consider two of the most common risk measures known as Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR). We derive the analytical forms of optimal partial hedging strategies under the criterion of minimizing VaR of the investor's total risk exposure. The knock-out call hedging strategy and the bull call spread hedging strategy are shown to be optimal among two admissible sets of hedging strategies. Since VaR risk measure has some undesired properties, we consider the CVaR risk measure and show that bull call spread hedging strategy is optimal under the criterion of minimizing CVaR of the investor's total risk exposure. The comparison between our proposed partial hedging strategies and some other partial hedging strategies, including the well-known quantile hedging strategy, is provided and the advantages of our proposed partial hedging strategies are highlighted. Then we apply the similar approaches in the context of reinsurance. The VaR-based optimal reinsurance strategies are derived under various constraints. Then we study the optimal partial hedging strategies under general risk measures. We provide the necessary and sufficient optimality conditions and use these conditions to study some specific hedging strategies. The robustness of our proposed CVaR-based optimal partial hedging strategy is also discussed in this part. Last but not least, we propose a new method, simulation-based approach, to formulate the optimal partial hedging models. By using the simulation-based approach, we can numerically obtain the optimal partial hedging strategy under various constraints and criteria. The numerical results in the examples in this part coincide with the theoretical results.

In this thesis the performances of different approximations are compared for a standard actuarial and financial problem: the estimation of quantiles and conditional tail expectations of the final value of a series of discrete cash flows. To calculate the risk measures such as quantiles and Conditional Tail Expectations, one needs the distribution function of the final wealth. The final value of a series of discrete payments in the considered model is the sum of dependent lognormal random variables. Unfortunately, its distribution function cannot be determined analytically. Thus usually one has to use time-consuming Monte Carlo simulations. Computational time still remains a serious drawback of Monte Carlo simulations, thus several analytical techniques for approximating the distribution function of final wealth are proposed in the frame of this thesis. These are the widely used moment-matching approximations and innovative comonotonic approximations. Moment-matching methods approximate the unknown distribution function by a given one in such a way that some characteristics (in the present case the first two moments) coincide. The ideas of two well-known approximations are described briefly. Analytical formulas for valuing quantiles and Conditional Tail Expectations are derived for both approximations. Recently, a large group of scientists from Catholic University Leuven in Belgium has derived comonotonic upper and comonotonic lower bounds for sums of dependent lognormal random variables. These bounds are bounds in the terms of "convex order". In order to provide the theoretical background for comonotonic approximations several fundamental ordering concepts such as stochastic dominance, stop-loss and convex order and some important relations between them are introduced. The last two concepts are closely related. Both stochastic orders express which of two random variables is the "less dangerous/more attractive" one. The central idea of comonotonic upper bound approximation is to replace the original sum, presenting final wealth, by a new sum, for which the components have the same marginal distributions as the components in the original sum, but with "more dangerous/less attractive" dependence structure. The upper bound, or saying mathematically, convex largest sum is obtained when the components of the sum are the components of comonotonic random vector. Therefore, fundamental concepts of comonotonicity theory which are important for the derivation of convex bounds are introduced. The most wide-spread examples of comonotonicity which emerge in financial context are described. In addition to the upper bound a lower bound can be derived as well. This provides one with a measure of the reliability of the upper bound. The lower bound approach is based on the technique of conditioning. It is obtained by applying Jensen's inequality for conditional expectations to the original sum of dependent random variables. Two slightly different version of conditioning random variable are considered in the context of this thesis. They give rise to two different approaches which are referred to as comonotonic lower bound and comonotonic "maximal variance" lower bound approaches. Special attention is given to the class of distortion risk measures. It is shown that the quantile risk measure as well as Conditional Tail Expectation (under some additional conditions) belong to this class. It is proved that both risk measures being under consideration are additive for a sum of comonotonic random variables, i.e. quantile and Conditional Tail Expectation for a comonotonic upper and lower bounds can easily be obtained by summing the corresponding risk measures of the marginals involved. A special subclass of distortion risk measures which is referred to as class of concave distortion risk measures is also under consideration. It is shown that quantile risk measure is not a concave distortion risk measure while Conditional Tail Expectation (under some additional conditions) is a concave distortion risk measure. A theoretical justification for the fact that "concave" Conditional Tail Expectation preserves convex order relation between random variables is given. It is shown that this property does not necessarily hold for the quantile risk measure, as it is not a concave risk measure. Finally, the accuracy and efficiency of two moment-matching, comonotonic upper bound, comonotonic lower bound and "maximal variance" lower bound approximations are examined for a wide range of parameters by comparing with the results obtained by Monte Carlo simulation. It is justified by numerical results that, generally, in the current situation lower bound approach outperforms other methods. Moreover, the preservation of convex order relation between the convex bounds for the final wealth by Conditional Tail Expectation is demonstrated by numerical results. It is justified numerically that this property does not necessarily hold true for the quantile.

The research on optimal reinsurance design dated back to the 1960’s. For nearly half a century, the quest for optimal reinsurance designs has remained a fascinating subject, drawing significant interests from both academicians and practitioners. Its fascination lies in its potential as an effective risk management tool for the insurers. There are many ways of formulating the optimal design of reinsurance, depending on the chosen objective and constraints. In this thesis, we address the problem of optimal reinsurance designs from an insurer’s perspective. For an insurer, an appropriate use of the reinsurance helps to reduce the adverse risk exposure and improve the overall viability of the underlying business. On the other hand, reinsurance incurs additional cost to the insurer in the form of reinsurance premium. This implies a classical risk and reward tradeoff faced by the insurer. The primary objective of the thesis is to develop theoretically sound and yet practical solution in the quest for optimal reinsurance designs. In order to achieve such an objective, this thesis is divided into two parts. In the first part, a number of reinsurance models are developed and their optimal reinsurance treaties are derived explicitly. This part focuses on the risk measure minimization reinsurance models and discusses the optimal reinsurance treaties by exploiting two of the most common risk measures known as the Value-at-Risk (VaR) and the Conditional Tail Expectation (CTE). Some additional important economic factors such as the reinsurance premium budget, the insurer’s profitability are also considered. The second part proposes an innovative method in formulating the reinsurance models, which we refer as the empirical approach since it exploits explicitly the insurer’s empirical loss data. The empirical approach has the advantage that it is practical and intuitively appealing. This approach is motivated by the difficulty that the reinsurance models are often infinite dimensional optimization problems and hence the explicit solutions are achievable only in some special cases. The empirical approach effectively reformulates the optimal reinsurance problem into a finite dimensional optimization problem. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the second-order conic programming can be used to obtain the optimal solutions for a wide range of reinsurance models formulated by the empirical approach.

Performance measurement is an integral part of investment analysis and risk management. Investment performance comprises two primary elements, namely; risk and return. The measurement of return is more straightforward compared with the measurement of risk: the latter is stochastic and thus requires more complex computation. Risk and return should, however, not be considered in isolation by investors as these elements are interlinked according to modern portfolio theory (MPT). The assembly of risk and return into a risk-adjusted number is an essential responsibility of performance measurement as it is meaningless to compare funds with dissimilar expected returns and risks by focusing solely on total return values. Since the advent of MPT performance evaluation has been conducted within the risk-return or mean-variance framework. Traditional, liner performance measures, such as the Sharpe ratio, do, however, have their drawbacks despite their widespread use and copious interpretations. The first problem explores the characterisation of hedge fund returns which lead to standard methods of assessing the risks and rewards of these funds being misleading and inappropriate. Volatility measures such as the Sharpe ratio, which are based on mean-variance theory, are generally unsuitable for dealing with asymmetric return distributions. The distribution of hedge fund returns deviates significantly from normality consequentially rendering volatility measures ill-suited for hedge fund returns due to not incorporating higher order moments of the returns distribution. Investors, nevertheless, rely on traditional performance measures to evaluate the risk-adjusted performance of (these) investments. Also, these traditional risk-adjusted performance measures were developed specifically for traditional investments (i.e. non-dynamic and or linear investments). Hedge funds also embrace a variety of strategies, styles and securities, all of which emphasises the necessity for risk management measures and techniques designed specifically for these dynamic funds. The second problem recognises that traditional risk-adjusted performance measures are not complete as they do not implicitly include or measure all components of risk. These traditional performance measures can therefore be considered one dimensional as each measure includes only a particular component or type of risk and leaves other risk components or dimensions untouched. Dynamic, sophisticated investments – such as those pursued by hedge funds – are often characterised by multi-risk dimensionality. The different risk types to which hedge funds are exposed substantiates the fact that volatility does not capture all inherent hedge fund risk factors. Also, no single existing measure captures the entire spectrum of risks. Therefore, traditional risk measurement methods must be modified, or performance measures that consider the components (factors) of risk left untouched (unconsidered) by the traditional performance measures should be considered alongside traditional performance appraisal measures. Moreover, the 2007-9 global financial crisis also set off an essential debate of whether risks are being measured appropriately and, in-turn, the re-evaluation of risk analysis methods and techniques. The need to continuously augment existing and devise new techniques to measure financial risk are paramount given the continuous development and ever-increasing sophistication of financial markets and the hedge fund industry. This thesis explores the named problems facing modern financial risk management in a hedge fund portfolio context through three objectives. The aim of this thesis is to critically evaluate whether the novel performance measures included provide investors with additional information, to traditional performance measures, when making hedge fund investment decisions. The Sharpe ratio is taken as the primary representative of traditional performance measures given its widespread use and also for being the hedge fund industry’s performance metric of choice. The objectives have been accomplished through the modification, altered use or alternative application of existing risk assessment techniques and through the development of new techniques, when traditional or older techniques proved to be inadequate.
PhD (Risk Management), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

01 Abstract: This thesis is concerned with the robust methods in portfolio theory. Different risk measures used in portfolio management are introduced and the corresponding robust portfolio optimization problems are formulated. The analytical solutions of the robust portfolio optimization problem with the lower partial moments (LPM), value-at-risk (VaR) or conditional value-at-risk (CVaR), as a risk measure, are presented. The application of the worst-case conditional value-at-risk (WCVaR) to robust portfolio management is proposed. This thesis considers WCVaR in the situation where only partial information on the underlying probability distribution is available. The minimization of WCVaR under mixture distribution uncertainty, box uncertainty, and ellipsoidal uncertainty are investigated. Several numerical examples based on real market data are presented to illustrate the proposed approaches and advantage of the robust formulation over the corresponding nominal approach.

The aim of this thesis is to present new results concerning duality in scalar optimization. We show how the theory can be applied to optimization problems arising in the theory of risk measures, portfolio optimization and machine learning. First we give some notations and preliminaries we need within the thesis. After that we recall how the well-known Lagrange dual problem can be derived by using the general perturbation theory and give some generalized interior point regularity conditions used in the literature. Using these facts we consider some special scalar optimization problems having a composed objective function and geometric (and cone) constraints. We derive their duals, give strong duality results and optimality condition using some regularity conditions. Thus we complete and/or extend some results in the literature especially by using the mentioned regularity conditions, which are weaker than the classical ones. We further consider a scalar optimization problem having single chance constraints and a convex objective function. We also derive its dual, give a strong duality result and further consider a special case of this problem. Thus we show how the conjugate duality theory can be used for stochastic programming problems and extend some results given in the literature. In the third chapter of this thesis we consider convex risk and deviation measures. We present some more general measures than the ones given in the literature and derive formulas for their conjugate functions. Using these we calculate some dual representation formulas for the risk and deviation measures and correct some formulas in the literature. Finally we proof some subdifferential formulas for measures and risk functions by using the facts above. The generalized deviation measures we introduced in the previous chapter can be used to formulate some portfolio optimization problems we consider in the fourth chapter. Their duals, strong duality results and optimality conditions are derived by using the general theory and the conjugate functions, respectively, given in the second and third chapter. Analogous calculations are done for a portfolio optimization problem having single chance constraints using the general theory given in the second chapter. Thus we give an application of the duality theory in the well-developed field of portfolio optimization. We close this thesis by considering a general Support Vector Machines problem and derive its dual using the conjugate duality theory. We give a strong duality result and necessary as well as sufficient optimality conditions. By considering different cost functions we get problems for Support Vector Regression and Support Vector Classification. We extend the results given in the literature by dropping the assumption of invertibility of the kernel matrix. We use a cost function that generalizes the well-known Vapnik's ε-insensitive loss and consider the optimization problems that arise by using this. We show how the general theory can be applied for a real data set, especially we predict the concrete compressive strength by using a special Support Vector Regression problem.

Insurance companies or other financial institutions face financial risks during their various activites. Risk capital is allocated in order to cover these risks. The goal of capital allocation is to redistribute this capital to various constituents of the firm with respect to their riskiness. The thesis deals with risk measures and allocation methods. Special emphasis is put on the notions of coherent risk measures and coherent allocation methods. Conditions of coherence are checked for certain allocation methods. The thesis also deals with practical calculation of allocations to individual risks using allocation methods. 1

This thesis investigates forecasting performance of Quantile Regression Neural Networks in forecasting multiperiod quantiles of realized volatility and quantiles of returns. It relies on model-free measures of realized variance and its components (realized variance, median realized variance, integrated variance, jump variation and positive and negative semivariances). The data used are S&P 500 futures and WTI Crude Oil futures contracts. Resulting models of returns and volatility have good absolute performance and relative performance in comparison to the linear quantile regression models. In the case of in- sample the models estimated by Quantile Regression Neural Networks provide better estimates than linear quantile regression models and in the case of out-of-sample they are equally good.

O tema desta dissertação é a importância e o impacto das condições de segurança e saúde no trabalho. Neste contexto, definiram-se como objetivos desta dissertação: • Avaliar a perceção dos trabalhadores quanto ao desempenho da empresa relativamente às condições de SST. • Avaliar a influência das condições de SST ao nível da motivação, produtividade, assiduidade e pontualidade. • Avaliar a importância dos indicadores de SST na perspetiva dos trabalhadores. • Aferir se existem variações na perceção das condições de SST com base em características sociodemográficas e socioprofissionais. • Recolher recomendações junto dos trabalhadores para a melhoria das condições de trabalho. Neste sentido, foi elaborado um inquérito dirigido aos colaboradores da empresa MM, de modo a verificar a sua satisfação neste âmbito. Os inquéritos realizados foram analisados estatisticamente, verificando-se que os colaboradores da MM percecionam que as condições de segurança e saúde no trabalho influenciam o desempenho no local de trabalho ao nível da motivação, produtividade, assiduidade e pontualidade. Também consideram importantes os indicadores de SST. Não se comprovou que haja variação de perceção, por parte dos trabalhadores, das condições de segurança e saúde no trabalho consoante características sociodemográficas como o sexo, grupo etário e habilitações literárias, nem com características socioprofissionais como a categoria profissional e antiguidade no posto. Sendo assim, foi possível concluir que, na ótica dos trabalhadores, a empresa MM tem um desempenho em matéria de SST que ainda não é, de uma forma geral, satisfatório, sendo apontados por alguns dos respondentes, sugestões de medidas de melhoria das condições de SST. A melhoria das condições de SST conduzirá, na ótica dos trabalhadores e também alicerçado em estudos publicados, a melhores resultados da empresa em matéria de motivação, produtividade, assiduidade e pontualidade.
The main purpose of this research is to evaluate the importance and impact of health and safety conditions at work. In this context, we defined as main goals of this work: • Evaluate workers' perception of the company's performance regarding OSH conditions. • Evaluate the influence of OSH conditions on the level of motivation, productivity, work attendance and punctuality. • Assess the importance of OSH indicators from the perspective of workers. • Assess if there are variations in the perception of OSH conditions based on sociodemographic and socio-professional characteristics. • Collect recommendations from workers to improve working conditions With this purpose, it was performed a survey for employees of MM, in order to verify their satisfaction in this area. The results of this survey were analyzed statistically, and it was verified that MM employees perceive that occupational health and safety conditions influence workplace performance in terms of motivation, productivity, work attendance and punctuality. They also consider OSH indicators important. There was no evidence of variation in workers' perception of occupational health and safety conditions according to sociodemographic characteristics such as gender, age group and literacy, or sociooccupational characteristics such as occupational category and seniority in the job rank. Thus, it was possible to conclude that, from the point of view of the workers, the company MM has an OSH performance that is still not satisfactory in general, and some of the respondents point out suggestions for measures to improve working conditions. From the point of view of workers and based on published studies. the improvement of the OSH conditions will also lead to better company results in terms of motivation, productivity, work attendance and punctuality,.