On optimal dividends: From reflection to refraction

The problem goes back to a paper that Bruno de Finetti presented to the International Congress of Actuaries in New York (1957). In a stock company that is involved in risky business, what is the optimal dividend strategy, that is, what is the strategy that maximizes the expectation of the discounted dividends (until possible ruin) to the shareholders? Jeanblanc-Picqué and Shiryaev [Russian Math. Surveys 20 (1995) 257–277] and Asmussen and Taksar [Insurance: Math. Econom. 20 (1997) 1–15] solved the problem by modeling the income process of the company by a Wiener process and imposing the condition of a bounded dividend rate. Here, we present some down-to-earth calculations in this context.     

Regularity of the American Put option in the Black–Scholes model with general discrete dividends

We analyze the regularity of the value function and of the optimal exercise boundary of the American Put option when the underlying asset pays a discrete dividend at known times during the lifetime of the option. The ex-dividend asset price process is assumed to follow the Black–Scholes dynamics and the dividend amount is a deterministic function of the ex-dividend asset price just before the dividend date. This function is assumed to be non-negative, non-decreasing and with growth rate not greater than 1. We prove that the exercise boundary is continuous and that the smooth contact property holds for the value function at any time but the dividend dates. We thus extend and generalize the results obtained in Jourdain and Vellekoop (2011) [10] when the dividend function is also positive and concave. Lastly, we give conditions on the dividend function ensuring that the exercise boundary is locally monotonic in a neighborhood of the corresponding dividend date.     

Classical Risk Model with Threshold Dividend Strategy

In this article, a threshold dividend strategy is used for classical risk model. Under this dividend strategy, certain probability of ruin, which occurs in case of constant barrier strategy, is avoided. Using the strong Markov property of the surplus process and the distribution of the deficit in classical risk model, the survival probability for this model is derived, which is more direct than that in Asmussen（2000, P195, Proposition 1.10）. The occupation time of non-dividend of this model is also discussed by means of Martingale method.     

Fluid limits of many-server queues with abandonments,general service and continuous patience time distributions

This paper extends the works of Kang and Ramanan (2010) and Kaspi and Ramanan (2011), removing the hypothesis of absolute continuity of the service requirement and patience time distributions. We consider a many-server queueing system in which customers enter service in the order of arrival in a non-idling manner and where reneging is considerate. Similarly to Kang and Ramanan (2010), the dynamics of the system are represented in terms of a process that describes the total number of customers in the system as well as two measure-valued processes that record the age in service of each of the customers being served and the “potential” waiting times. When the number of servers goes to infinity, fluid limit is established for this triple of processes. The convergence is in the sense of probability and the limit is characterized by an integral equation.     

Time dependent analysis of finite buffer fluid flows and risk models with a dividend barrier

Based on the matrix-analytic approach to fluid flows initiated by Ramaswami, we develop an efficient time dependent analysis for a general Markov modulated fluid flow model with a finite buffer and an arbitrary initial fluid level at time 0. We also apply this to an insurance risk model with a dividend barrier and a general Markovian arrival process of claims with possible dependencies in successive inter-claim intervals and in claim sizes. We demonstrate the implementability and accuracy of our algorithms through a set of numerical examples that could also serve as test cases for comparing other solution approaches.      

Optimal dividends in the Brownian motion risk model with interest

In this paper, we consider a Brownian motion risk model, and in addition, the surplus earns investment income at a constant force of interest. The objective is to find a dividend policy so as to maximize the expected discounted value of dividend payments. It is well known that optimality is achieved by using a barrier strategy for unrestricted dividend rate. However, ultimate ruin of the company is certain if a barrier strategy is applied. In many circumstances this is not desirable. This consideration leads us to impose a restriction on the dividend stream. We assume that dividends are paid to the shareholders according to admissible strategies whose dividend rate is bounded by a constant. Under this additional constraint, we show that the optimal dividend strategy is formed by a threshold strategy.     

De Finetti’s optimal dividends problem with an affine penalty function at ruin

In a Lévy insurance risk model, under the assumption that the tail of the Lévy measure is log-convex, we show that either a horizontal barrier strategy or the take-the-money-and-run strategy maximizes, among all admissible strategies, the dividend payments subject to an affine penalty function at ruin. As a key step for the proof, we prove that, under the aforementioned condition on the jump measure, the scale function of the spectrally negative Lévy process has a log-convex derivative.     

Moment properties of multivariate infinitely divisible laws and criteria for multivariate self-decomposability

Ramachandran (1969) [9, Theorem 8] has shown that for any univariate infinitely divisible distribution and any positive real number α, an absolute moment of order α relative to the distribution exists (as a finite number) if and only if this is so for a certain truncated version of the corresponding Lévy measure. A generalized version of this result in the case of multivariate infinitely divisible distributions, involving the concept of g-moments, was given by Sato (1999) [6, Theorem 25.3]. We extend Ramachandran’s theorem to the multivariate case, keeping in mind the immediate requirements under appropriate assumptions of cumulant studies of the distributions referred to; the format of Sato’s theorem just referred to obviously varies from ours and seems to have a different agenda. Also, appealing to a further criterion based on the Lévy measure, we identify in a certain class of multivariate infinitely divisible distributions the distributions that are self-decomposable; this throws new light on structural aspects of certain multivariate distributions such as the multivariate generalized hyperbolic distributions studied by Barndorff-Nielsen (1977) [12] and others. Various points relevant to the study are also addressed through specific examples.     

Dividend payments in the classical risk model under absolute ruin with debit interest

This paper attempts to study the dividend payments in a compound Poisson surplus process with debit interest. Dividends are paid to the shareholders according to a barrier strategy. An alternative assumption is that business can go on after ruin, as long as it is profitable. When the surplus is negative, a debit interest is applied. At first, we obtain the integro‐differential equations satisfied by the moment‐generating function and moments of the discounted dividend payments and we also prove the continuous property of them at zero. Then, applying these results, we get the explicit expressions of the moment‐generating function and moments of the discounted dividend payments for exponential claims. Furthermore, we discuss the optimal dividend barrier when the claim sizes have a common exponential distribution. Finally, we give the numerical examples for exponential claims and Erlang (2) claims. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Skorokhod embeddings, minimality and non-centred target distributions

In this paper we consider the Skorokhod embedding problem for target distributions with non-zero mean. In the zero-mean case, uniform integrability provides a natural restriction on the class of embeddings, but this is no longer suitable when the target distribution is not centred. Instead we restrict our class of stopping times to those which are minimal, and we find conditions on the stopping times which are equivalent to minimality. We then apply these results, firstly to the problem of embedding non-centred target distributions in Brownian motion, and secondly to embedding general target laws in a diffusion. We construct an embedding (which reduces to the Azema-Yor embedding in the zero-target mean case) which maximises the law of sup_s≤TB_s among the class of minimal embeddings of a general target distribution μ in Brownian motion. We then construct a minimal embedding of μ in a diffusion X which maximises the law of sup_s≤Th(X_s) for a general function h.     

Large deviations and related problems for absorbing Markov chains

In this paper, large deviations and their connections with several other fundamental topics are investigated for absorbing Markov chains. A variational representation for the Dirichlet principal eigenvalues is given by the large deviation approach. Kingman’s decay parameters and mean ratio quasi-stationary distributions of the chains are also characterized by the large deviation rate function. As an application of these results, we interpret the “stationarity” of mean ratio quasi-stationary distributions via a concrete example. An application to quasi-ergodicity is also discussed.     

Passage Times in Fluid Models with Application to Risk Processes

An efficient quadratically convergent algorithm has been derived earlier by Ahn and Ramaswami for computing the busy period distribution of the canonical fluid flow model. In this paper, we derive formulae for a variety of passage time distributions in the canonical fluid flow model in terms of its busy period distribution and that of its reflection about the time axis. These include several passage time distributions with taboo not only of the fluid level 0 but also of a set [a, ∞) of levels. These are fundamental to the analysis of a large set of complex applied probability models, and their use is illustrated in the context of a general insurance risk model with Markovian arrival of claims and phase type distributed claim sizes, a context in which we have also introduced some new ideas that make the analysis very transparent.      

Bilateral gamma distributions and processes in financial mathematics

We present a class of Lévy processes for modelling financial market fluctuations: bilateral Gamma processes. Our starting point is to explore the properties of bilateral Gamma distributions, and then we turn to their associated Lévy processes. We treat exponential Lévy stock models with an underlying bilateral Gamma process as well as term structure models driven by bilateral Gamma processes, and apply our results to a set of real financial data (DAX 1996–1998).     

On a Dual Risk Model Perturbed by Diffusion with Dividend Threshold

In the dual risk model, the surplus process of a company is a L′evy process with sample paths that are skip-free downwards. In this paper, the authors assume that the surplus process is the sum of a compound Poisson process and an independent Wiener process. The dual of the jump-diffusion risk model under a threshold dividend strategy is discussed. The authors derive a set of two integro-differential equations satisfied by the expected total discounted dividend until ruin. The cases where profits follow an exponential or mixtures of exponential distributions are solved. Applying the key method of the Laplace transform, the authors show how the integro-differential equations are solved. The authors also discuss the conditions for optimality and show how an optimal dividend threshold can be calculated as well.     

Semi-selfdecomposable distributions and a new class of limit theorems

Self-decomposable distributions are given as limits of normalized sums of independent random variables. We define semi-selfdecomposable distributions as limits of subsequences of normalized sums. More generally, we introduce a way of making a new class of limiting distributions derived from a class of distributions by taking the limits through subsequences of normalized sums, and define the class of semi-selfdecomposable distributions and a decreasing sequence of subclasses of it. We give two kinds of necessary and sufficient conditions for distributions belonging to those classes, one is in terms of the decomposability of random variables and another is in terms of Lévy measures. Received: 1 May 1997 / Revised version: 5 February 1998     

Risk models with dependence between claim occurrences and severities for Atlantic hurricanes

In the line of Cossette et al. (2003), we adapt and refine known Markovian-type risk models of Asmussen (1989) and Lu and Li (2005) to a hurricane risk context. These models are supported by the findings that El Niño/Southern Oscillation (as well as other natural phenomena) influence both the number of hurricanes and their strength. Hurricane risk is thus broken into three components: frequency, intensity and damage where the first two depend on the state of the Markov chain and intensity influences the amount of damage to an individual building. The proposed models are estimated with Florida hurricane data and several risk measures are computed over a fictitious portfolio.     

On the optimality of periodic barrier strategies for a spectrally positive Lévy process

We study the optimal dividend problem in the dual model where dividend payments can only be made at the jump times of an independent Poisson process. In this context, Avanzi et al. (2014) solved the case with i.i.d. hyperexponential jumps; they showed the optimality of a (periodic) barrier strategy where dividends are paid at dividend-decision times if and only if the surplus is above some level. In this paper, we generalize the results for a general spectrally positive Lévy process with additional terminal payoff/penalty at ruin, and also solve the case with classical bail-outs so that the surplus is restricted to be nonnegative. The optimal strategies as well as the value functions are concisely written in terms of the scale function. Numerical results are also given.     

On optimal periodic dividend strategies in the dual model with diffusion

The dual model with diffusion is appropriate for companies with continuous expenses that are offset by stochastic and irregular gains. Examples include research-based or commission-based companies. In this context, Bayraktar et al. (2013a) show that a dividend barrier strategy is optimal when dividend decisions are made continuously. In practice, however, companies that are capable of issuing dividends make dividend decisions on a periodic (rather than continuous) basis.In this paper, we consider a periodic dividend strategy with exponential inter-dividend-decision times and continuous monitoring of solvency. Assuming hyperexponential gains, we show that a periodic barrier dividend strategy is the periodic strategy that maximizes the expected present value of dividends paid until ruin. Interestingly, a ‘liquidation-at-first-opportunity’ strategy is optimal in some cases where the surplus process has a positive drift. Results are illustrated.     

On the Gerber-Shiu function for a risk model with multi-layer dividend strategy

In this paper, we present a new approach to the study of the Gerber-Shiu discounted function for the risk model with multi-layer dividend strategy. The formulae for the Gerber-Shiu discounted function and ruin probability were obtained and the special case where the claim size distribution is a combination of exponentials is considered in detail.