Probabilism,entropies and strictly proper scoring rules

Accuracy arguments are the en vogue route in epistemic justifications of probabilism and further norms governing rational belief. These arguments often depend on the fact that the employed inaccuracy measure is strictly proper. I argue controversially that it is ill-advised to assume that the employed inaccuracy measures are strictly proper and that strictly proper statistical scoring rules are a more natural class of measures of inaccuracy. Building on work in belief elicitation I show how strictly proper statistical scoring rules can be used to give an epistemic justification of probabilism.An agent's evidence does not play any role in these justifications of probabilism. Principles demanding the maximisation of a generalised entropy depend on the agent's evidence. In the second part of the paper I show how to simultaneously justify probabilism and such a principle. I also investigate scoring rules which have traditionally been linked with entropies.     

Convexity Bias in the Pricing of Eurodollar Swaps

The traditional use of LIBOR futures prices to obtain surrogates for the Eurodollar forward rates is proved to yield a systematic bias in the pricing of Eurodollar swaps when one assumes that the yield curve is well described by the Heath-Jarrow-Morton model. The resulting theoretical inequality is consistent with the empirical observations of Burghardt and Hoskins (1995), and it provide a theoretical basis for price anomalies that are suggested by more recent empirical data.     

An optimal co-reinsurance strategy

This article considers a co-reinsurance strategy that (1) protects insurance companies against catastrophic risks; (2) enables insurers to gather sufficient information about the different risk attitudes of reinsurers and diversify their reinsured risks; (3) enables insurers to create better risk-sharing profiles by balancing the risk tolerances of reinsurers; (4) has the benefit of allowing reinsurers to accumulate experience with risks with which they are unfamiliar; (5) reduces the overall direct cost of a reinsurance contract; (6) allows a government to back some insurance products, such as the terrorism insurance programs that were established in many countries after the September 11th terrorist attacks; and (7) reflects the practical reinsurance industry of some countries, such as Iran. Such a co-reinsurance strategy can be fully determined by estimating its parameters whenever three optimal criteria are satisfied and prior information about the unknown parameters is available. Two simulation-based studies have been conducted to demonstrate (1) the practical applications of our findings and (2) the possible impact of any type of dependency between the co-reinsurance’s parameters and the evaluated optimal co-reinsurance strategy.     

Modelling day‐ahead electricity prices

A production‐based approach is introduced to take into account different attitudes and liabilities of market participants to discuss the equilibrium day‐ahead prices on electricity. Conditions ensuring the existence of the equilibrium are given and price distribution is considered. A discussion of reasons for high price volatility is given.     

BSDE approach to utility maximization with square-root factor processes

We consider the utility-based portfolio selection problem in a continuous-time setting. We assume the market price of risk depends on a stochastic factor that satisfies an affine-form, square-root, Markovian model. This financial market framework includes the classical geometric Brownian motion, CEV model, and Heston’s model as special cases. Adopting the BSDE approach, we obtain closed-form solutions for the optimal portfolio strategies and value functions for the logarithmic, power, and exponential utility functions.     

Expanding conceptions of utility: middle school students’ perspectives on the usefulness of mathematics

This research explores how adolescents conceptualize the usefulness of mathematics. Integrating sociocultural theory with the study of utility value, this study uses open-ended survey items and interview tasks to examine conceptions of usefulness among a group of predominantly Latinx middle school students. Findings reveal that students primarily conceptualized the usefulness of mathematics in two ways. First, students considered the applicability of mathematics content, focusing on applications of mathematics in everyday life and future jobs/careers. Second, students considered the usefulness of features of the learning experience, such as the form of interaction and structure of the activity. Both conceptions are compared to existing conceptions of usefulness in the literature, and implications for classroom practice and future research are discussed.     

基于CEEMD的重大事件对香港住宅价格影响的实证分析

应用互补集成经验模态分解（CEEMD）方法对香港1997―2018年的住宅价格月度数据进行了分解,将经过重构后的数据分成高频序列、低频序列与残差项。将BP多断点检测应用于低频序列,并结合样本时段内的重大事件进行实证分析。结果表明：1997年亚洲金融风暴对房价的影响大于2008年金融危机;外部经济体的救市政策间接地影响香港房价;在经济不景气的大环境下“孙九招”政策没有立即见效;资本投资者入境计划、住房供给调整与按揭贷款调整对房价的影响较为显著;税收调整对房价影响不显著、对交易量影响显著;SARS爆发使住宅价格下降约1%。     

Chains of reinsurance

A one-dimensional, hierarchical system of reinsurance is considered. A member of the chain is in direct contact with only two other members: the one from which coverage is bought and the one to which coverage is sold. Exceptions are the first link (which does not sell any reinsurance coverage) and the last link (which does not buy any). The problem is to find the values of the quotas and the loadings that are optimal in some sense. Assuming exponential utility functions and a normal distribution for the claims, an explicit solution is found for two versions of the model.