arXiv subjects

Christa Cuchiero

Publications and source records attributed to Christa Cuchiero.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Measure-valued processes for energy markets

We introduce a framework that allows to employ (non-negative) measure-valued processes for energy market modeling, in particular for electricity and gas futures. Interpreting the process' spatial structure as time to maturity, we show how the Heath-Jarrow-Morton approach can be translated to this framework, thus guaranteeing arbitrage free modeling in infinite dimensions. We derive an analog to the HJM-drift condition and then treat in a Markovian setting existence of non-negative measure-valued diffusions that satisfy this condition. To analyze mathematically convenient classes we build on Cuchiero et al. (2021) and consider measure-valued polynomial and affine diffusions, where we can precisely specify the diffusion part in terms of continuous functions satisfying certain admissibility conditions. For calibration purposes these functions can then be parameterized by neural networks yielding measure-valued analogs of neural SPDEs. By combining Fourier approaches or the moment formula with stochastic gradient descent methods, this then allows for tractable calibration procedures which we also test by way of example on market data. We also sketch how measure-valued processes can be applied in the context of renewable energy production modeling.

q-fin.MF↗

arXiv2022

Signature-based models: theory and calibration

We consider asset price models whose dynamics are described by linear functions of the (time extended) signature of a primary underlying process, which can range from a (market-inferred) Brownian motion to a general multidimensional continuous semimartingale. The framework is universal in the sense that classical models can be approximated arbitrarily well and that the model's parameters can be learned from all sources of available data by simple methods. We provide conditions guaranteeing absence of arbitrage as well as tractable option pricing formulas for so-called sig-payoffs, exploiting the polynomial nature of generic primary processes. One of our main focus lies on calibration, where we consider both time-series and implied volatility surface data, generated from classical stochastic volatility models and also from S&P500 index market data. For both tasks the linearity of the model turns out to be the crucial tractability feature which allows to get fast and accurate calibrations results.

q-fin.MF↗

arXiv2022

Implicit and fully discrete approximation of the supercooled Stefan problem in the presence of blow-ups

We consider two implicit approximation schemes of the one-dimensional supercooled Stefan problem and prove their convergence, even in the presence of finite time blow-ups. All proofs are based on a probabilistic reformulation recently considered in the literature. The first scheme is a version of the time-stepping scheme studied in V. Kaushansky, C. Reisinger, M. Shkolnikov, and Z. Q. Song, arXiv:2010.05281, 2020, but here the flux over the free boundary and its velocity are coupled implicitly. Moreover, we extend the analysis to more general driving processes than Brownian motion. The second scheme is a Donsker-type approximation, also interpretable as an implicit finite difference scheme, for which global convergence is shown under minor technical conditions. With stronger assumptions, which apply in cases without blow-ups, we obtain additionally a convergence rate arbitrarily close to 1/2. Our numerical results suggest that this rate also holds for less regular solutions, in contrast to explicit schemes, and allow a sharper resolution of the discontinuous free boundary in the blow-up regime.

math.NA↗

arXiv2022

Propagation of minimality in the supercooled Stefan problem

Supercooled Stefan problems describe the evolution of the boundary between the solid and liquid phases of a substance, where the liquid is assumed to be cooled below its freezing point. Following the methodology of Delarue, Nadtochiy and Shkolnikov, we construct solutions to the one-phase one-dimensional supercooled Stefan problem through a certain McKean-Vlasov equation, which allows to define global solutions even in the presence of blow-ups. Solutions to the McKean-Vlasov equation arise as mean-field limits of particle systems interacting through hitting times, which is important for systemic risk modeling. Our main contributions are: (i) we prove a general tightness theorem for the Skorokhod M1-topology which applies to processes that can be decomposed into a continuous and a monotone part. (ii) We prove propagation of chaos for a perturbed version of the particle system for general initial conditions. (iii) We prove a conjecture of Delarue, Nadtochiy and Shkolnikov, relating the solution concepts of so-called minimal and physical solutions, showing that minimal solutions of the McKean-Vlasov equation are physical whenever the initial condition is integrable.

math.PR↗

arXiv2022

Risk measures under model uncertainty: a Bayesian viewpoint

We introduce two kinds of risk measures with respect to some reference probability measure, which both allow for a certain order structure and domination property. Analyzing their relation to each other leads to the question when a certain minimax inequality is actually an equality. We then provide conditions under which the corresponding robust risk measures, being defined as the supremum over all risk measures induced by a set of probability measures, can be represented classically in terms of one single probability measure. We focus in particular on the mixture probability measure obtained via mixing over a set of probability measures using some prior, which represents for instance the regulator's beliefs. The classical representation in terms of the mixture probability measure can then be interpreted as a Bayesian approach to robust risk measures.

q-fin.RM↗

arXiv2021

Measure-valued affine and polynomial diffusions

We introduce a class of measure-valued processes, which -- in analogy to their finite dimensional counterparts -- will be called measure-valued polynomial diffusions. We show the so-called moment formula, i.e.~a representation of the conditional marginal moments via a system of finite dimensional linear PDEs. Furthermore, we characterize the corresponding infinitesimal generators and obtain a representation analogous to polynomial diffusions on $\mathbb{R}^m_+$, in cases where their domain is large enough. In general the infinite dimensional setting allows for richer specifications strictly beyond this representation. As a special case we recover measure-valued affine diffusions, sometimes also called Dawson-Watanabe superprocesses. From a mathematical finance point of view the polynomial framework is especially attractive as it allows to transfer the most famous finite dimensional models, such as the Black-Scholes model, to an infinite dimensional measure-valued setting. We outline in particular the applicability of our approach for term structure modeling in energy markets.

math.PR↗

arXiv2021

A weak solution theory for stochastic Volterra equations of convolution type

We obtain general weak existence and stability results for stochastic convolution equations with jumps under mild regularity assumptions, allowing for non-Lipschitz coefficients and singular kernels. Our approach relies on weak convergence in $L^p$ spaces. The main tools are new a priori estimates on Sobolev-Slobodeckij norms of the solution, as well as a novel martingale problem that is equivalent to the original equation. This leads to generic approximation and stability theorems in the spirit of classical martingale problem theory. We also prove uniqueness and path regularity of solutions under additional hypotheses. To illustrate the applicability of our results, we consider scaling limits of nonlinear Hawkes processes and approximations of stochastic Volterra processes by Markovian semimartingales.

math.PR↗

arXiv2020

A generative adversarial network approach to calibration of local stochastic volatility models

We propose a fully data-driven approach to calibrate local stochastic volatility (LSV) models, circumventing in particular the ad hoc interpolation of the volatility surface. To achieve this, we parametrize the leverage function by a family of feed-forward neural networks and learn their parameters directly from the available market option prices. This should be seen in the context of neural SDEs and (causal) generative adversarial networks: we generate volatility surfaces by specific neural SDEs, whose quality is assessed by quantifying, possibly in an adversarial manner, distances to market prices. The minimization of the calibration functional relies strongly on a variance reduction technique based on hedging and deep hedging, which is interesting in its own right: it allows the calculation of model prices and model implied volatilities in an accurate way using only small sets of sample paths. For numerical illustration we implement a SABR-type LSV model and conduct a thorough statistical performance analysis on many samples of implied volatility smiles, showing the accuracy and stability of the method.

q-fin.CP↗

arXiv2020

Discrete-time signatures and randomness in reservoir computing

A new explanation of geometric nature of the reservoir computing phenomenon is presented. Reservoir computing is understood in the literature as the possibility of approximating input/output systems with randomly chosen recurrent neural systems and a trained linear readout layer. Light is shed on this phenomenon by constructing what is called strongly universal reservoir systems as random projections of a family of state-space systems that generate Volterra series expansions. This procedure yields a state-affine reservoir system with randomly generated coefficients in a dimension that is logarithmically reduced with respect to the original system. This reservoir system is able to approximate any element in the fading memory filters class just by training a different linear readout for each different filter. Explicit expressions for the probability distributions needed in the generation of the projected reservoir system are stated and bounds for the committed approximation error are provided.

cs.NE↗

arXiv2020

Deep neural networks, generic universal interpolation, and controlled ODEs

A recent paradigm views deep neural networks as discretizations of certain controlled ordinary differential equations, sometimes called neural ordinary differential equations. We make use of this perspective to link expressiveness of deep networks to the notion of controllability of dynamical systems. Using this connection, we study an expressiveness property that we call universal interpolation, and show that it is generic in a certain sense. The universal interpolation property is slightly weaker than universal approximation, and disentangles supervised learning on finite training sets from generalization properties. We also show that universal interpolation holds for certain deep neural networks even if large numbers of parameters are left untrained, and are instead chosen randomly. This lends theoretical support to the observation that training with random initialization can be successful even when most parameters are largely unchanged through the training. Our results also explore what a minimal amount of trainable parameters in neural ordinary differential equations could be without giving up on expressiveness.

math.OC↗

arXiv2019

Infinite dimensional polynomial processes

We introduce polynomial processes taking values in an arbitrary Banach space $B$ via their infinitesimal generator $L$ and the associated martingale problem. We obtain two representations of the (conditional) moments in terms of solutions of a system of ODEs on the truncated tensor algebra of dual respectively bidual spaces. We illustrate how the well-known moment formulas for finite dimensional or probability-measure valued polynomial processes can be deduced in this general framework. As an application we consider polynomial forward variance curve models which appear in particular as Markovian lifts of (rough) Bergomi-type volatility models. Moreover, we show that the signature process of a $d$-dimensional Brownian motion is polynomial and derive its expected value via the polynomial approach.

math.PR↗

arXiv2019

Markovian lifts of positive semidefinite affine Volterra type processes

We consider stochastic partial differential equations appearing as Markovian lifts of matrix valued (affine) Volterra type processes from the point of view of the generalized Feller property (see e.g., \cite{doetei:10}). We introduce in particular Volterra Wishart processes with fractional kernels and values in the cone of positive semidefinite matrices. They are constructed from matrix products of infinite dimensional Ornstein Uhlenbeck processes whose state space are matrix valued measures. Parallel to that we also consider positive definite Volterra pure jump processes, giving rise to multivariate Hawkes type processes. We apply these affine covariance processes for multivariate (rough) volatility modeling and introduce a (rough) multivariate Volterra Heston type model.

math.PR↗

arXiv2019

Generalized Feller processes and Markovian lifts of stochastic Volterra processes: the affine case

We consider stochastic (partial) differential equations appearing as Markovian lifts of affine Volterra processes with jumps from the point of view of the generalized Feller property which was introduced in e.g.~\cite{doetei:10}. In particular we provide new existence, uniqueness and approximation results for Markovian lifts of affine rough volatility models of general jump diffusion type. We demonstrate that in this Markovian light the theory of stochastic Volterra processes becomes almost classical.

math.PR↗

arXiv2018

Probability measure-valued polynomial diffusions

We introduce a class of probability measure-valued diffusions, coined polynomial, of which the well-known Fleming--Viot process is a particular example. The defining property of finite dimensional polynomial processes considered by Cuchiero et al. (2012) and Filipovic and Larsson (2016) is transferred to this infinite dimensional setting. This leads to a representation of conditional marginal moments via a finite dimensional linear PDE, whose spatial dimension corresponds to the degree of the moment. As a result, the tractability of finite dimensional polynomial processes are preserved in this setting. We also obtain a representation of the corresponding extended generators, and prove well-posedness of the associated martingale problems. In particular, uniqueness is obtained from the duality relationship with the PDEs mentioned above.

math.PR↗

arXiv2017

Polynomial jump-diffusions on the unit simplex

Polynomial jump-diffusions constitute a class of tractable stochastic models with wide applicability in areas such as mathematical finance and population genetics. We provide a full parameterization of polynomial jump-diffusions on the unit simplex under natural structural hypotheses on the jumps. As a stepping stone, we characterize well-posedness of the martingale problem for polynomial operators on general compact state spaces.

math.PR↗

arXiv2017

Polynomial processes in stochastic portfolio theory

We introduce polynomial processes in the sense of [8] in the context of stochastic portfolio theory to model simultaneously companies' market capitalizations and the corresponding market weights. These models substantially extend volatility stabilized market models considered by Robert Fernholz and Ioannis Karatzas in [18], in particular they allow for correlation between the individual stocks. At the same time they remain remarkably tractable which makes them applicable in practice, especially for estimation and calibration to high dimensional equity index data. In the diffusion case we characterize the joint polynomial property of the market capitalizations and the corresponding weights, exploiting the fact that the transformation between absolute and relative quantities perfectly fits the structural properties of polynomial processes. Explicit parameter conditions assuring the existence of a local martingale deflator and relative arbitrages with respect to the market portfolio are given and the connection to non-attainment of the boundary of the unit simplex is discussed. We also consider extensions to models with jumps and the computation of optimal relative arbitrage strategies.

q-fin.MF↗

arXiv2017

A fundamental theorem of asset pricing for continuous time large financial markets in a two filtration setting

We present a version of the fundamental theorem of asset pricing (FTAP) for continuous time large financial markets with two filtrations in an $L^p$-setting for $ 1 \leq p < \infty$. This extends the results of Yuri Kabanov and Christophe Stricker \cite{KS:06} to continuous time and to a large financial market setting, however, still preserving the simplicity of the discrete time setting. On the other hand it generalizes Stricker's $L^p$-version of FTAP \cite{S:90} towards a setting with two filtrations. We do neither assume that price processes are semi-martigales, (and it does not follow due to trading with respect to the \emph{smaller} filtration) nor that price processes have any path properties, neither any other particular property of the two filtrations in question, nor admissibility of portfolio wealth processes, but we rather go for a completely general (and realistic) result, where trading strategies are just predictable with respect to a smaller filtration than the one generated by the price processes. Applications range from modeling trading with delayed information, trading on different time grids, dealing with inaccurate price information, and randomization approaches to uncertainty.

q-fin.MF↗

arXiv2017

Affine multiple yield curve models

We provide a general and tractable framework under which all multiple yield curve modeling approaches based on affine processes, be it short rate, Libor market, or HJM modeling, can be consolidated. We model a numeraire process and multiplicative spreads between Libor rates and simply compounded OIS rates as functions of an underlying affine process. Besides allowing for ordered spreads and an exact fit to the initially observed term structures, this general framework leads to tractable valuation formulas for caplets and swaptions and embeds all existing multi-curve affine models. The proposed approach also gives rise to new developments, such as a short rate type model driven by a Wishart process, for which we derive a closed-form pricing formula for caplets. The empirical performance of two specifications of our framework is illustrated by calibration to market data.

q-fin.MF↗