Notes on contributors

Mathematics in the United States developed slowly over its first one hundred years. Before the appearance of successful mathematics journals, American mathematicians depended on science journals to publish their work. Three journals, the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Journal of Science and Arts, played pivotal roles in the development of a mathematics publication community.     

风险项目的投资期权分析

本文讨论了风险投资家向企业主融资时的投资期权,求出了投资期权的表达式,并对其中的一些参数进行了分析.     

美式回望期权定价问题的有限体积法

随着金融市场的不断发展, 期权作为一种能够规避风险的金融衍生产品越来越引起投资者的青睐, 成交量呈逐年上升的趋势, 期权定价问题已经成为金融数学领域中一个重要的研究课题. 本文主要研究Black-Scholes模型下美式回望期权定价问题的数值解法. 美式回望期权定价问题是一个二维非线性抛物问题, 难以直接应用数值方法进行求解. 通过分析该问题的求解难点, 本文给出解决该困难的有效方法. 首先利用计价单位变换将定价问题转换为一维自由边值问题, 并采用Landau's变换将求解区域规范化; 而后针对问题的非线性特点,利用有限体积法和Newton法交替迭代求解期权价格和最佳实施边界, 并对数值解的非负性进行了分析. 最后, 通过与二叉树方法进行比较, 验证了本文方法的正确性和有效性, 为实际应用提供了理论基础.     

Synthesis, spectroscopic characterization, DFT studies and biological assays of a novel gold(I) complex with 2-mercaptothiazoline

A new gold(I) complex with 2-mercaptothiazoline (MTZ) with the coordination formula [AuCN(C₃H₅NS₂)] was synthesized and characterized by chemical and spectroscopic measurements, DFT studies and biological assays. Infrared (IR) and ¹H, ¹³C and ¹⁵N nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic measurements indicate coordination of the ligand to gold(I) through the nitrogen atom. Studies based on DFT confirmed nitrogen coordination to gold(I) as a minimum of the potential energy surface with calculations of the hessians showing no imaginary frequencies. Thermal decomposition starts at temperatures near 160 °C, leading to the formation of Au⁰ as the final residue at 1000 °C. The gold(I) complex with 2-mercaptothiazoline (Au-MTZ) is soluble in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), and is insoluble in water, methanol, ethanol, acetonitrile and hexane. The antibacterial activities of the Au-MTZ complex were evaluated by an antibiogram assay using the disc diffusion method. The compound showed an effective antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus (Gram-positive) and Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Gram-negative) bacterial cells. Biological analysis for evaluation of the cytotoxic effect of the Au-MTZ complex was performed using HeLa cells derived from human cervical adenocarcinoma. The complex presented a potent cytotoxic activity, inducing 85% of cell death at a concentration of 2.0 μmol L⁻¹.     

Efficient pricing of discrete Asian options

Asian options are popular path-dependent financial derivatives. This paper uses lattices to price fixed-strike European-style Asian options that are discretely monitored. The algorithm proposed can also be applied to floating-strike Asian options as well because fixed-strike and floating-strike Asian options are related through an equation. The discretely monitored version is usually found in practice instead of the continuously monitored version usually encountered in the literature. This paper presents the first provably quadratic-time convergent lattice algorithm for pricing fixed-strike European-style discretely monitored Asian options. It is the most efficient lattice algorithm with convergence guarantees. The algorithm relies on the Lagrange multipliers to choose the number of states for each node of the lattice. Extensive numerical experiments and comparisons with many existing numerical methods confirm the performance claims and the competitiveness of our algorithm. This result places fixed-strike European-style discretely monitored Asian options in the same complexity class as vanilla options.     

Approximation of bivariate copulas by patched bivariate Fréchet copulas

Bivariate Fréchet (BF) copulas characterize dependence as a mixture of three simple structures: comonotonicity, independence and countermonotonicity. They are easily interpretable but have limitations when used as approximations to general dependence structures. To improve the approximation property of the BF copulas and keep the advantage of easy interpretation, we develop a new copula approximation scheme by using BF copulas locally and patching the local pieces together. Error bounds and a probabilistic interpretation of this approximation scheme are developed. The new approximation scheme is compared with several existing copula approximations, including shuffle of min, checkmin, checkerboard and Bernstein approximations and exhibits better performance, especially in characterizing the local dependence. The utility of the new approximation scheme in insurance and finance is illustrated in the computation of the rainbow option prices and stop-loss premiums.     

Free boundary problem concerning pricing convertible bond

In this paper, we consider some behaviors of the optimal conversion boundaries (i.e. free boundaries) of American‐style convertible bond with finite horizon in some case. The bond's holder may convert it into the stock of its issued firm at any time before maturity, and the firm may call it at any time before maturity. Its pricing model is a parabolic variational inequality, in which the fundamental variables are time and the stock price of the bond's issuer. We achieve some properties of the free boundary, besides the existence and uniqueness of the solution of the variational inequality, such as: the monotonicity, the boundedness, smoothness and its starting point. Moreover, we analyze the relationship between the free boundary and the parameters in the problem, as well as, obtain the critical condition where the free boundary is a constant independent of time. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the explicit evaluation of the Geometric Asian options in stochastic volatility models with jumps

In the present paper we provide a semiexplicit valuation formula for Geometric Asian options, with fixed and floating strike under continuous monitoring, when the underlying stock price process exhibits both stochastic volatility and jumps. More precisely, we shall work in the Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard (BNS) model framework. We shall provide some numerical illustrations of the results obtained.     

Hysteresis effects under CIR interest rates

Most decision making research in real options focuses on revenue uncertainty assuming discount rates remain constant. However, for many decisions revenue or cost streams are relatively static and investment is driven by interest rate uncertainty, for example the decision to invest in durable machinery and equipment. Using interest rate models from Cox et al. (1985b), we generalize the work of Ingersoll and Ross (1992) in two ways. Firstly, we include real options on perpetuities (in addition to zero coupon cash flows). Secondly, we incorporate abandonment or disinvestment as well as investment options, and thus model interest rate hysteresis (parallel to revenue uncertainty in Dixit (1989a)). Under stochastic interest rates, economic hysteresis is found to be significant, even for small sunk costs.