Critics claim that capital requirements can exacerbate credit cycles by restricting lending in an economic downturn. The introduction of Basel 2, in particular, has led to concerns that risksensitive capital charges are highly correlated with the business cycle. The Basel Committee is contemplating a revision of the Basel Accord by introducing counter-cyclical capital buffers. Others claim that...

The present paper is concerned with the optimal control of stochastic differential equations, where uncertainty stems from one or more independent Poisson processes. Optimal behavior in such a setup (e.g., optimal consumption) is usually determined by employing the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation. This, however, requires strong assumptions on the model, such as a bounded utility function and b...

This paper develops an endogenous growth model with dualism in human capital accumulation of two types of individuals. The government imposes a proportional redistributive tax on the resources of the rich individual to finance the educational subsidy given to the poor individuals. We find out the properties of optimal tax cum educational subsidy policy using Stackelberg differential game framew...

In a life-cycle model, we calculate the contribution of the generosity of unemployment insurance (UI) on the unemployment rates in Canada and the U.S. The model predicts a 0.81% difference in unemployment rates (one third of the actual difference) in these countries. Social welfare improves if the benefit ratio increases from 45 percent to 55 percent of the working income. Savings drop and aver...

This paper deals with risk measurement and portfolio optimization under risk constraints. Firstly we give an overview of risk assessment from the viewpoint of risk theory, focusing on moment-based, distortion and spectral risk measures. We subsequently apply these ideas to an asset management framework using a database of hedge funds returns chosen for their nonGaussian features. We deal with t...

Environmental problems, such as climate change, have great uncertainties. Current expectations are that uncertainties about climate change will be resolved quickly. We examine this hypothesis theoretically and computationally. We consider Bayesian learning about the relationship between greenhouse gas levels and global mean temperature changes, a key uncertainty. Learning is non-trivial because...

We analyze the investment decision of a firm that has an option to complete an investment project either in one lump or in two smaller parts at distinct points in time. The firm faces a trade-off between the cost savings that arise when the project is completed at once and the additional flexibility that arises when the firm is able to respond to resolving uncertainty by choosing optimal timing...

This paper shows how a mean variance criterion can be applied to a multi period setting in order to obtain efficient portfolios in an asset and liability context. The optimization model allows for rebalancing activities, transaction costs, stochastic volatilities for both assets and liabilities. Furthermore, a general framework for the projection of pension fund liabilities as well as for the g...

In this paper we discuss the interaction of default risk and liquidity risk on pricing financial contracts. We show that two risks are almost indistinguishable if the underlying contract has non-negative values; however, if it can take both positive and negative values then these two risks demand different risk premiums depending on their loss rates and distributions. We discuss a structural de...

We offer a framework to analyze Value-at-Risk based regulation rules and their possible distortion effects on financial markets. Our model is formulated in a continuous-time economy where investors maximize expected utility subject to some regulatory Value-at-Risk constraint when asset price dynamics are not lognormal and exhibit stochastic volatility. To retain tractability of the optimization...