2.II.28I
(a) In the context of a single-period financial market with traded assets and a single riskless asset earning interest at rate , what is an arbitrage? What is an equivalent martingale measure? Explain marginal utility pricing, and how it leads to an equivalent martingale measure.
(b) Consider the following single-period market with two assets. The first is a riskless bond, worth 1 at time 0 , and 1 at time 1 . The second is a share, worth 1 at time 0 and worth at time 1 , where is uniformly distributed on the interval , where . Under what condition on is this model arbitrage free? When it is, characterise the set of equivalent martingale measures.
An agent with utility and with wealth at time 0 aims to pick the number of shares to hold so as to maximise his expected utility of wealth at time 1 . Show that he will choose to be positive if and only if .
An option pays at time 1 . Assuming that , deduce that the agent's price for this option will be , and show that the range of possible prices for this option as the pricing measure varies in is the interval .