2.II.28I

Stochastic Financial Models
Part II, 2006

(a) In the context of a single-period financial market with nn traded assets and a single riskless asset earning interest at rate rr, 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 S1S_{1} at time 1 , where S1S_{1} is uniformly distributed on the interval [0,a][0, a], where a>0a>0. Under what condition on aa is this model arbitrage free? When it is, characterise the set E\mathcal{E} of equivalent martingale measures.

An agent with C2C^{2} utility UU and with wealth ww at time 0 aims to pick the number θ\theta of shares to hold so as to maximise his expected utility of wealth at time 1 . Show that he will choose θ\theta to be positive if and only if a>2a>2.

An option pays (S11)+\left(S_{1}-1\right)^{+}at time 1 . Assuming that a=2a=2, deduce that the agent's price for this option will be 1/41 / 4, and show that the range of possible prices for this option as the pricing measure varies in E\mathcal{E} is the interval (0,12)\left(0, \frac{1}{2}\right).