Critical age-dependent branching process diffusions

Two diffusions are derived as the limits in finite dimensional distributions of appropriately conditioned and scaled critical age-dependent branching processes. A technical lemma about the asymptotic behavior of the joint generating function is used to overcome the difficulties introduced by the non-Markov nature of the process. The results are extensions of those of Lamperti and Ney [5] for Galton-Watson processes. Also, the “age-dependent Q-process” is defined and its transition probabilities obtained.     

Convergence to diffusions with regular boundaries

Earlier results on weak convergence to diffusion processes [8] are generalized to cases where the limiting diffusions may have regular boundaries. The boundaries may be adhesive or reflecting, and in each case we give two different sets of conditions for convergence. It is shown that these conditions are necessary and sufficient for convergence in the same sense as the conditions in [8]. We also extend our results to cases where the coefficients of the diffusions have simple discontinuities, in particular we thereby answer an open question by Keilson and Wellner [9]. Finally we formulate alternative sets of conditions for convergence, with these new sets being more convenient for instance when the sequence under investigation consists of pure jump Markov processes in continuous time.     

Stability of regime-switching diffusions

This work is devoted to stability of regime-switching diffusion processes. After presenting the formulation of regime-switching diffusions, the notion of stability is recalled, and necessary conditions for p$p$-stability are obtained. Then main results on stability and instability for systems arising in approximation are presented. Easily verifiable conditions are established. An example is examined as a demonstration. A remark on linear systems is also provided.     

Hypoelliptic non-homogeneous diffusions

 Let be a time dependent second order operator, written in usual or H?rmander form. We study the regularity of the law of the associated non-homogeneous (time dependent) diffusion process, under H?rmander's like conditions. Coefficients are only H?lder continuous in time. The main tool is Malliavin calculus. Our results extend and correct previous ones ([17] and related works, [15]). Related topics like filtering theory, killed or reflected processes, parabolic hypoellipticity are also discussed. Received: October 1999/Revised version: 12 November 2001 / Published online: 1 July 2002     

Forward equations for reflected diffusions with jumps

In this paper we obtain the forward equations associated with the evolution of the density, if it exists, of reflected diffusions on the positive orthant with jumps which form a marked point process whose random jump measure possesses a stochastic intensity. These results generalize the so-called generalized Dynkin equations for piecewise deterministic jump processes due to Davis. We then consider the stationary case where the existence of a stochastic intensity is not needed. The techniques are based on local times and the use of random jump measures. We discuss the application of these results to problems arising in queuing and storage processes as well as stationary distributions of diffusions with delayed and jump reflections at the origin.This research was supported in part by the Quebec-France Cooperative Research Program and by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada under Grant OGP 0042024.     

Single-person controlled diffusions with discounted costs

This paper describes a class of single-person controlled one-dimensional diffusion processes where the control is a vector-valued function on the state space, which is a compact interval of the real line. These processes generate costs, and the optimal control problem is to choose an admissible control that minimizes expected discounted costs. The major results are necessary and sufficient conditions for a control to be optimal as well as characterizations of the expected costs corresponding to an optimal control. This paper also established sufficient conditions for the existence of piecewise-continuous optimal controls.The author is grateful to M. L. Puterman and R. W. Rosenthal for their helpful comments during the course of this research. The author is especially indebted to A. F. Veinott, Jr., for his guidance of the author's doctoral dissertation, on part of which this paper is based. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, Grant No. GK-18339, as well as the Office of Naval Research, Contract No. N00014-67-A-0112-0050.     

Transportation cost inequalities for Wasserstein diffusions

In this work we establish some types of transportation cost inequalities for two kinds of probability measure-valued processes: Wasserstein diffusions and Fleming–Viot processes. Besides, we prove that the Fleming–Viot processes generally don?t satisfy the super Poincaré inequalities.     

Mean stochastic comparison of diffusions

Summary Stochastic bounds are derived for one dimensional diffusions (and somewhat more general random processes) by dominating one process pathwise by a convex combination of other processes. The method permits comparison of diffusions with different diffusion coefficients. One interpretation of the bounds is that an optimal control is identified for certain diffusions with controlled drift and diffusion coefficients, when the reward function is convex. An example is given to show how the bounds and the Liapunov function technique can be applied to yield bounds for multidimensional diffusions.This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-82-K-0359 and the U.S. Army Research Office under Contract DAAG29-82-K-0091 (administered through the University of California at Berkeley).     

On the excursion theory for linear diffusions

We present a number of important identities related to the excursion theory of linear diffusions. In particular, excursions straddling an independent exponential time are studied in detail. Letting the parameter of the exponential time tend to zero it is seen that these results connect to the corresponding results for excursions of stationary diffusions (in stationary state). We characterize also the laws of the diffusion prior and posterior to the last zero before the exponential time. It is proved using Krein’s representations that, e.g. the law of the length of the excursion straddling an exponential time is infinitely divisible. As an illustration of the results we discuss the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck processes.     

Measure diffusions and related explosion problems

For random measure-valued stochastic partial differential equations for biological processes, growth represented by scalar partial differential equations at each point of the support and spread being a diffusion on R ^d, solutions are constructed by smearing the growth processes at each spatial point and composing the resulting generator with the generator for the spread. If these solutions are unique the equation is called solvable. We find conditions for the noise term of a solvable equations to have trivial effect and we identify some non-solvable equations, for example the diffusion-free bilinear equation. The search led to an investigation of explosion and the effect of point barriers for scalar stochastic differential equations with linear drift; this is used to explain the clustering effect in the usual superprocess.     

Malliavin Monte Carlo Greeks for jump diffusions

In recent years efficient methods have been developed for calculating derivative price sensitivities using Monte Carlo simulation. Malliavin calculus has been used to transform the simulation problem in the case where the underlying follows a Markov diffusion process. In this work, recent developments in the area of Malliavin calculus for Levy processes are applied and slightly extended. This allows for derivation of similar stochastic weights as in the continuous case for a certain class of jump-diffusion processes.     

Two-parameter diffusions random fields

This paper presents an alternative method for calculating the diffusion, drift, and mixed coefficients of an example of biparameter Gaussian diffusion defined as a solution of a linear hyperbolic stochastic partial differential equation (Nualart & Sanz , 1979). To derive the expression of these coefficients, we part from an integral stochastic repre , sentation given by these authors for this class of biparameter diffusion processes arising from biparameter Gaussian random fields verifying a particular Markov property     

Long-term and blow-up behaviors of exponential moments in multi-dimensional affine diffusions

This paper considers multi-dimensional affine processes with continuous sample paths. By analyzing the Riccati system, which is associated with affine processes via the transform formula, we fully characterize the regions of exponents in which exponential moments of a given process do not explode at any time or explode at a given time. In these two cases, we also compute the long-term growth rate and the explosion rate for exponential moments. These results provide a handle to study implied volatility asymptotics in models where log-returns of stock prices are described by affine processes whose exponential moments do not have an explicit formula.     

An invariance principle for non-symmetric Markov processes and reflecting diffusions in random domains

Summary We study an invariance principle for additive functionals of nonsymmetric Markov processes with singular mean forward velocities. We generalize results of Kipnis and Varadhan [KV] and De Masi et al. [De] in two directions: Markov processes are non-symmetric, and mean forward velocities are distributions. We study continuous time Markov processes. We use our result to homogenize non-symmetric reflecting diffusions in random domains.     

Existence of equilibrium for infinite system of interacting diffusions

We develop and implement new probabilistic strategy for proving basic results about long-time behavior for interacting diffusion processes on unbounded lattice. The concept of the solution used is rather weak as we construct the process as a solution to suitable infinite-dimensional martingale problem. However, the techniques allow us to consider cases where the generator of the particle is degenerate elliptic operator. As a model example, we present the situation where the operator arises from Heisenberg group. In the last section, we provide further examples that can be handled using our methods.     

Divergence theorems in path space III: Hypoelliptic diffusions and beyond

Let x denote a diffusion process defined on a closed compact manifold. In an earlier article, the author introduced a new approach to constructing admissible vector fields on the associated space of paths, under the assumption of ellipticity of x. In this article, this method is extended to yield similar results for degenerate diffusion processes. In particular, these results apply to non-elliptic diffusions satisfying Hörmander's condition.     

On expected utility in optimal stopping of diffusions

Suppose an agent with a static risk preference faces prize processes given by diffusion processes and decides when to stop. We show that the agent satisfies dynamic consistency of preferences if and only if she adheres to Expected Utility. This extends the classical dynamic characterization of Expected Utility to a setup of processes with continuous paths, in which the classical discrete-time proof techniques do not apply.     

Exact adaptive pointwise drift estimation for multidimensional ergodic diffusions

The problem of pointwise adaptive estimation of the drift coefficient of a multivariate diffusion process is investigated. We propose an estimator which is sharp adaptive on scales of Sobolev smoothness classes. The analysis of the exact risk asymptotics allows to identify the impact of the dimension and other influencing values—such as the geometry of the diffusion coefficient—of the prototypical drift estimation problem for a large class of multidimensional diffusion processes. We further sketch generalizations of our results to arbitrary diffusions satisfying suitable Bernstein-type inequalities.     

Semimartingales on rays,Walsh diffusions,and related problems of control and stopping

We introduce a class of continuous planar processes, called “semimartingales on rays”, and develop for them a change-of-variable formula involving quite general classes of test functions. Special cases of such processes are diffusions which choose, once at the origin, the rays for their subsequent voyage according to a fixed probability measure in the manner of Walsh (1978). We develop existence and uniqueness results for these “Walsh diffusions”, study their asymptotic behavior, and develop tests for explosions in finite time. We use these results to find an optimal strategy, in a problem of stochastic control with discretionary stopping involving Walsh diffusions.     

Risk-sensitive stochastic differential games with reflecting diffusions

We study risk-sensitive differential games for controlled reflecting diffusion processes in a bounded domain. We consider both nonzero-sum and zero-sum cases. We treat two cost evaluation criteria; namely, discounted cost and ergodic cost. Under certain assumptions we establish the existence of Nash/saddle-point equilibria for relevant cases.