A convex duality approach for pricing contingent claims under partial information and short selling constraints

We consider the pricing problem facing a seller of a contingent claim. We assume that this seller has some general level of partial information, and that he is not allowed to sell short in certain assets. This pricing problem, which is our primal problem, is a constrained stochastic optimization problem. We derive a dual to this problem by using the conjugate duality theory introduced by Rockafellar. Furthermore, we give conditions for strong duality to hold. This gives a characterization of the price of the claim involving martingale- and super-martingale conditions on the optional projection of the price processes.     

Electricity swing option pricing by stochastic bilevel optimization: A survey and new approaches

We demonstrate how the problem of determining the ask price for electricity swing options can be considered as a stochastic bilevel program with asymmetric information. Unlike as for financial options, there is no way for basing the pricing method on no-arbitrage arguments. Two main situations are analyzed: if the seller has strong market power he/she might be able to maximize his/her utility, while in fully competitive situations he/she will just look for a price which makes profit and has acceptable risk. In both cases the seller has to consider the decision problem of a potential buyer – the valuation problem of determining a fair value for a specific option contract – and anticipate the buyer’s optimal reaction to any proposed strike price. We also discuss some methods for finding numerical solutions of stochastic bilevel problems with a special emphasis on using duality gap penalizations.     

An elementary survey of general duality theory in mathematical programming

We survey some recent developments in duality theory with the idea of explaining and unifying certain basic duality results in both nonlinear and integer programming. The idea of replacing dual variables (prices) by price functions, suggested by Everett and developed by Gould, is coupled with an appropriate dual problem with the consequence that many of the results resemble those used in linear programming. The dual problem adopted has a (traditional) economic interpretation and dual feasibility then provides a simple alternative to concepts such as conjugate functions or subdifferentials used in the study of optimality. In addition we attempt to make precise the relationship between primal, dual and saddlepoint results in both the traditional Lagrangean and the more general duality theories and to see the implications of passing from prices to price functions. Finally, and perhaps surprisingly, it appears that all the standard algorithms terminate by constructing primal and dual feasible solutions of equal value, i.e., by satisfying generalised optimality conditions.     

The infinite time horizon dynamic pricing problem with multi-unit demand

This paper studies a dynamic pricing problem for a monopolist selling multiple identical items to potential buyers arriving over time, where the time horizon is infinite, the goods are imperishable and the buyers’ arrival follows a renewal process. Each potential buyer has some private information about his purchasing will, and this private information is unknown to the seller and therefore characterized as a random variable in this paper. Thus, the buyers may have multi-unit demand. Meanwhile, the seller needs to determine the optimal posted price such that his expected discounted revenue is maximized. This problem is formulated as a stochastic dynamic programming in this paper and then how to obtain the solution is explored. A numerical study shows that the optimal posted price performs better than that of optimal fixed price, and this advantage becomes obvious as the interest rate and/or the number of initial items increases.     

Auctions with an asking price

This paper studies a sales mechanism, prevalent in housing markets, where the seller does not reveal or commit to a reserve price but instead publicly announces an asking price. We show that the seller sets an asking price such that, in equilibrium, buyers of certain types would accept it with positive probability. We also show that this sales mechanism, with an optimally chosen asking price set prior to the seller learning her value, does better than any standard auction with a reserve price equal to the seller’s reservation value. We then extend the analysis to the case where the asking price reveals information about the seller’s reservation value. We show that in this case there is a separating equilibrium with fully-revealing asking prices, which is revenue-equivalent to a standard auction with a reserve price set at the seller’s reservation value.     

Utility maximization problem with random endowment and transaction costs: when wealth may become negative

In this article, we study the problem of maximizing expected utility from the terminal wealth with proportional transaction costs and random endowment. In the context of the existence of consistent price systems, we consider the duality between the primal utility maximization problem and the dual one, which is set up on the domain of finitely additive measures. In particular, we prove duality results for utility functions supporting possibly negative values. Moreover, we construct a shadow market by the dual optimal process and consider the utility-based pricing for random endowment.     

Robust conjugate duality for convex optimization under uncertainty with application to data classification

In this paper we present a robust conjugate duality theory for convex programming problems in the face of data uncertainty within the framework of robust optimization, extending the powerful conjugate duality technique. We first establish robust strong duality between an uncertain primal parameterized convex programming model problem and its uncertain conjugate dual by proving strong duality between the deterministic robust counterpart of the primal model and the optimistic counterpart of its dual problem under a regularity condition. This regularity condition is not only sufficient for robust duality but also necessary for it whenever robust duality holds for every linear perturbation of the objective function of the primal model problem. More importantly, we show that robust strong duality always holds for partially finite convex programming problems under scenario data uncertainty and that the optimistic counterpart of the dual is a tractable finite dimensional problem. As an application, we also derive a robust conjugate duality theorem for support vector machines which are a class of important convex optimization models for classifying two labelled data sets. The support vector machine has emerged as a powerful modelling tool for machine learning problems of data classification that arise in many areas of application in information and computer sciences.     

Bounding Contingent Claim Prices via Hedging Strategy with Coherent Risk Measures

We generalize the notion of arbitrage based on the coherent risk measure, and investigate a mathematical optimization approach for tightening the lower and upper bounds of the price of contingent claims in incomplete markets. Due to the dual representation of coherent risk measures, the lower and upper bounds of price are located by solving a pair of semi-infinite linear optimization problems, which further reduce to linear optimization when conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) is used as risk measure. We also show that the hedging portfolio problem is viewed as a robust optimization problem. Tuning the parameter of the risk measure, we demonstrate by numerical examples that the two bounds approach to each other and converge to a price that is fair in the sense that seller and buyer face the same amount of risk.     

The exact penalty map for nonsmooth and nonconvex optimization

Augmented Lagrangian duality provides zero duality gap and saddle point properties for nonconvex optimization. On the basis of this duality, subgradient-like methods can be applied to the (convex) dual of the original problem. These methods usually recover the optimal value of the problem, but may fail to provide a primal solution. We prove that the recovery of a primal solution by such methods can be characterized in terms of (i) the differentiability properties of the dual function and (ii) the exact penalty properties of the primal-dual pair. We also connect the property of finite termination with exact penalty properties of the dual pair. In order to establish these facts, we associate the primal-dual pair to a penalty map. This map, which we introduce here, is a convex and globally Lipschitz function and its epigraph encapsulates information on both primal and dual solution sets.     

Duality for nondifferentiable minimax programming in complex spaces

Employing the optimality (necessary and sufficient) conditions of a nondifferentiable minimax programming problem in complex spaces, we formulate a one-parametric dual and a parameter free dual problems. On both dual problems, we establish three duality theorems: weak, strong, and strict converse duality theorem, and prove that there is no duality gap between the two dual problems with respect to the primal problem under some generalized convexities of complex functions in the complex programming problem.     

Duality for nondifferentiable minimax programming in complex spaces

Employing the optimality (necessary and sufficient) conditions of a nondifferentiable minimax programming problem in complex spaces, we formulate a one-parametric dual and a parameter free dual problems. On both dual problems, we establish three duality theorems: weak, strong, and strict converse duality theorem, and prove that there is no duality gap between the two dual problems with respect to the primal problem under some generalized convexities of complex functions in the complex programming problem.     

A fuzzy mathematical model for the joint economic lot size problem with multiple price breaks

This paper applies fuzzy mathematical programming to solve the joint economic lot size problem with multiple price breaks. In order to entice the buyer to increase the order quantity, it is a common practice for the seller to offer quantity discounts to the buyer. From the system viewpoint, the joint cost for the seller and buyer can be minimized only when the buyer increases his economic order quantity. The problem is how to determine the number of price breaks, as well as the quantity discount and order quantity at each price break, to achieve the optimal joint cost. Fuzzy mathematical programming provides a very efficient algorithm to solve the above problem simultaneously from the perspectives of the seller and the buyer. Another common problem in joint economic lot size model is how to split the system profit between the seller and the buyer. Whereas the traditional approach to this problem is to divide the profit based on a certain ratio determined by the bargaining power of both parties, fuzzy mathematical programming can achieve the same satisfaction level to both parties based on their respective cost functions.     

Martingale optimal transport and robust hedging in continuous time

The duality between the robust (or equivalently, model independent) hedging of path dependent European options and a martingale optimal transport problem is proved. The financial market is modeled through a risky asset whose price is only assumed to be a continuous function of time. The hedging problem is to construct a minimal super-hedging portfolio that consists of dynamically trading the underlying risky asset and a static position of vanilla options which can be exercised at the given, fixed maturity. The dual is a Monge–Kantorovich type martingale transport problem of maximizing the expected value of the option over all martingale measures that have a given marginal at maturity. In addition to duality, a family of simple, piecewise constant super-replication portfolios that asymptotically achieve the minimal super-replication cost is constructed.     

On the Interpretation of Optimal Dual Solutions in Convex Programming

The relationships between multiple optimal dual solutions of a convex programming problem and the corresponding primal optimal value function are established by straightforward arguments on known results in duality theory. The subsequent discussion includes a demonstration that one-sided shadow prices can be found by solving a linear programming problem, conditions for the uniqueness and validity of the classical shadow price interpretation and a specialization of the results to the linear programming case.     

一个对偶问题与对偶性质

本文对非可微凸规划问题建立了一个新的对偶问题 ,并证明其对偶性质 ,如弱对偶性 ,强对偶性及逆对偶性。     

基于广义几何规划的最小广义信息密度区分问题及其对偶理论

§ 1　ＩｎｔｒｏｄｕｃｔｉｏｎＴｈｅｑｕａｄｒａｔｉｃａｌｌｙｃｏｎｓｔｒａｉｎｅｄａｎｄｅｎｔｒｏｐｙｄｅｎｓｉｔｙｃｏｎｓｔｒａｉｎｅｄｑｕａｄｒａｔｉｃｐｒｏｇｒａｍｔｈａｔｉｓｇｏｉｎｇｔｏｂｅｓｔｕｄｉｅｄｉｎｔｈｉｓｐａｐｅｒｉｓｃｈａｒａｃｔｅｒｉｚｅｄａｓｔｈｅｆｏｌｌｏｗｉｎｇｆｏｒｍ :Ｐｒｏｇｒａｍ (Ｑ)(Ｑ)　　ｍｉｎ　Ｑ0 (ｚ)ｓ .ｔ .　Ｐｊ(ｚ)≤ 0 ,　ｊ =1 ,2 ,...,ｌ,Ｑｉ(ｚ) ≤ 0 ,　ｉ =1 ,2 ,...,ｒ ,ｚ=(ｚ1,...,ｚｎ) Ｔ ≥ 0 ,ｗｈｅｒｅＰｊ(ｚ) = ｎｋ =1ｚｋｌｏｇ ｚｋｅ…     

非凸集值优化问题严有效解的强对偶定理

本文研究了非凸集值向量优化的严有效解在两种对偶模型的强对偶问题.利用Lagrange对偶和Mond-Weir对偶原理,获得了如下结果：原集值优化问题的严有效解,在一些条件下是对偶问题的强有效解,并且原问题和对偶问题的目标函数值相等;推广了集值优化对偶理论在锥-凸假设下的相应结果.     

Multiobjective duality for convex ratios

In this paper we present a duality approach for a multiobjective fractional programming problem. The components of the vector objective function are particular ratios involving the square of a convex function and a positive concave function. Applying the Fenchel-Rockafellar duality theory for a scalar optimization problem associated to the multiobjective primal, a dual problem is derived. This scalar dual problem is formulated in terms of conjugate functions and its structure gives an idea about how to construct a multiobjective dual problem in a natural way. Weak and strong duality assertions are presented.     

凸规划的一个对偶问题

1引言考虑标准的非可微凸规划问题