Stochastic orders and their applications in financial optimization

Stochastic orders and inequalities are very useful tools in various areas of economics and finance. The purpose of this paper is to describe main results obtained so far by using the idea of stochastic orders in financial optimization. Especially, the emphasis is placed on the demand and shift effect problems in portfolio selection. Some other examples, which are not related directly to optimization problems, are also given to demonstrate the wide spectrum of application areas of stochastic orders in finance.