We obtain functional central limit theorems for both discrete time expressions of the form $1/\sqrt{N}\sum_{n=1}^{[Nt]}(F(X(q_1(n)),\ldots, X(q_{\ell}(n)))-\bar{F})$ and similar expressions in the continuous time where the sum is replaced by an integral. Here $X(n),n\geq0$ is a sufficiently fast mixing vector process with some moment conditions and stationarity properties, $F$ is a continuous function with polynomial growth and certain regularity properties, $\bar{F}=\int F\,d(μ\times\cdots\timesμ)$, $μ$ is the distribution of $X(0)$ and $q_i(n)=in$ for $i\le k\leq\ell$ while for $i>k$ they are positive functions taking on integer values on integers with some growth conditions which are satisfied, for instance, when $q_i$'s are polynomials of increasing degrees. These results decisively generalize [Probab. Theory Related Fields 148 (2010) 71-106], whose method was only applicable to the case $k=2$ under substantially more restrictive moment and mixing conditions and which could not be extended to convergence of processes and to the corresponding continuous time case. As in [Probab. Theory Related Fields 148 (2010) 71-106], our results hold true when $X_i(n)=T^nf_i$, where $T$ is a mixing subshift of finite type, a hyperbolic diffeomorphism or an expanding transformation taken with a Gibbs invariant measure, as well as in the case when $X_i(n)=f_i({Υ}_n)$, where ${Υ}_n$ is a Markov chain satisfying the Doeblin condition considered as a stationary process with respect to its invariant measure. Moreover, our relaxed mixing conditions yield applications to other types of dynamical systems and Markov processes, for instance, where a spectral gap can be established. The continuous time version holds true when, for instance, $X_i(t)=f_i(ξ_t)$, where $ξ_t$ is a nondegenerate continuous time Markov chain with a finite state space or a nondegenerate diffusion on a compact manifold. A partial motivation for such limit theorems is due to a series of papers dealing with nonconventional ergodic averages.
We give a theory of sublinear expectations and martingales in discrete time. Without assuming the existence of a dominating probability measure, we derive the extensions of classical results on uniform integrability, optional stopping of martingales, and martingale convergence. We also give a theory of BSDEs in the context of sublinear expectations and a finite-state space, including general existence and comparison results.
For any discrete-time $P$--local martingale $S$ there exists a probability measure $Q \sim P$ such that $S$ is a $Q$--martingale. A new proof for this result is provided. The core idea relies on an appropriate modification of an argument by Chris Rogers, used to prove a version of the fundamental theorem of asset pricing in discrete time. This proof also yields that, for any $\varepsilon>0$, the measure $Q$ can be chosen so that $\frac{dQ}{dP} \leq 1+\varepsilon$.
In this paper, martingales related to simple random walks and their maximum process are investigated. First, a sufficient condition under which a function with three arguments, time, the random walk, and its maximum process becomes a martingale is presented, and as an application, an alternative way of deriving the Kennedy martingale is provided. Then, a complete characterization of a function with two arguments, the random walk and its maximum, being a martingale is presented. This martingale can be regarded as a discrete version of the Azéma--Yor martingale. As applications of discrete Azéma…
The Fock transform recently introduced by the authors in a previous paper is applied to investigate convergence of generalized functional sequences of a discrete-time normal martingale $M$. A necessary and sufficient condition in terms of the Fock transform is obtained for such a sequence to be strong convergent. A type of generalized martingales associated with $M$ are introduced and their convergence theorems are established. Some applications are also shown.
In this paper, we aim at characterizing generalized functionals of discrete-time normal martingales. Let $M=(M_n)_{n\in \mathbb{N}}$ be a discrete-time normal martingale that has the chaotic representation property. We first construct testing and generalized functionals of $M$ with an appropriate orthonormal basis for $M$'s square integrable functionals. Then we introduce a transform, called the Fock transform, for these functionals and characterize them via the transform. Several characterization theorems are established. Finally we give some applications of these characterization theorems. O…
This letter derives some new exponential bounds for discrete time, real valued, conditionally symmetric martingales with bounded jumps. The new bounds are extended to conditionally symmetric sub/ supermartingales, and they are compared to some existing bounds.
We derive inequalities for time-discrete and time-continuous martingales that are similar to the well-known Burkholder inequalities. For the time-discrete case arbitrary martingales in $L^p(Ω)$ are treated, whereas in the time-continuous case martingales defined by Itô integrals w.r.t. a multi-dimensional Wiener process are considered. The estimates for the time-discrete martingales are related to the more general results by I. Pinelis (1994) and are proved to be sharp by a different and more elementary proof for this special setting. Further, for time-continuous martingales the presented ineq…
In this paper non-asymptotic exponential and moment estimates are derived for tail of distribution for discrete time martingale and martingale transform by means of martingale differences in the terms of moments and tails of distributions of summands and multipliers. We show also the exactness of obtained estimations and consider some applications in the theory of limit theorem for Banach space valued martingales.
We investigate the properties of a discrete-time martingale $\{X_m\}_{m\in \mathbb Z_{\geq 0}}$, where all differences between adjacent random variables are limited to be not more than a constant as a promise. In this situation, it is known that the Azuma-Hoeffding inequality holds, which gives an upper bound of a probability for exceptional events. The inequality gives a simple form of the upper bound, and it has been utilized for many investigations. However, the inequality is not tight. We give an explicit expression of a tight upper bound, and we show that it and the bound obtained from th…
In this article we discuss the problem of calculating optimal model-independent (robust) bounds for the price of Asian options with discrete and continuous averaging. We will give geometric characterisations of the maximising and the minimising pricing model for certain types of Asian options in discrete and continuous time. In discrete time the problem is reduced to finding the optimal martingale transport for the cost function $|x+y|$. In the continuous time case we consider the cases with one and two given marginals. We describe the maximising models in both of these cases as well as the mi…
In the paper, the martingales and super-martingales relative to a regular set of measures are systematically studied. The notion of local regular super-martingale relative to a set of equivalent measures is introduced and the necessary and sufficient conditions of the local regularity of it in the discrete case are founded. The regular set of measures play fundamental role for the description of incomplete markets. In the partial case, the description of the regular set of measures is presented. The notion of completeness of the regular set of measures have the important significance for the s…
We provide explicit bounds on the Wasserstein distance between discrete time martingales and the standard normal distribution. The proofs are based on a combination of Lindeberg's and Stein's method.
We introduce a new definition of speculative bubbles in discrete-time models based on the discounted stock price losing mass at some finite drop-down under an equivalent martingale measure. We provide equivalent probabilistic characterisations of this definition and give examples of discrete-time martingales that are speculative bubbles and those that are not. In the Markovian case, we provide sufficient analytic conditions for the presence of speculative bubbles. We also show that the existence of speculative bubbles is directly linked to the existence of a non-trivial solution to a linear Vo…
We construct a nonstandard martingale from a discrete Markov chain. This is shown to be useful for solving the heat equation with a non smooth initial condition. We show that the nonstandard solution to the heat equation with a smooth initial condition specialises to the classical solution.
Let $M$ be a discrete-time normal martingale that has the chaotic representation property. Then, from the space of square integrable functionals of $M$, one can construct generalized functionals of $M$. In this paper, by using a type of weights, we introduce a class of continuous linear operators acting on generalized functionals of $M$, which we call generalized weighted number (GWN) operators. We prove that GWN operators can be represented in terms of generalized annihilation and creation operators (acting on generalized functionals of $M$). We also examine commutation relations between a GW…
As an alternative to the well-known methods of "chaining" and "bracketing" that have been developed in the study of random fields, a new method, which is based on a stochastic maximal inequality derived by using the Taylor expansion, is presented. The inequality dealing with finite-dimensional discrete-time martingales is pulled up to infinite-dimensional ones by using the monotone convergence arguments. The main results are some weak convergence theorems for sequences of separable random fields of discrete-time martingales under the uniform topology with the help also of entropy methods. As s…
The aim of this paper is to represent any continuous local martingale as an almost sure limit of a nested sequence of simple, symmetric random walks, time changed by a discrete quadratic variation process. One basis of this is a similar construction of Brownian motion. The other major tool is a representation of continuous local martingales given by Dambis, Dubins and Schwarz (DDS) in terms of Brownian motion time-changed by the quadratic variation. Rates of convergence (which are conjectured to be nearly optimal in the given setting) are also supplied. A necessary and sufficient condition for…
We show that all local martingales with respect to the initially enlarged natural filtration of a vector of multivariate point processes can be weakly represented up to the minimum among the explosion times of the components. We also prove that a strong representation holds if any multivariate point process of the vector has almost surely infinite explosion time and discrete mark's space. Then we provide a condition under which the components of the multidimensional local martingale driving the strong representation are pairwise orthogonal.
Lecture notes for a master-level mathematics course on martingales and stochastic calculus, held at the University of Orléans, France. With corrected exercises. Contents: Discrete-time martingales, stopping times, convergence theorems. Brownian motion, Itô integrals, stochastic differential equations, diffusions. ----- Notes d'un cours de Master 2 en mathématiques, donné à l'Université d'Orléans. Avec exercices corrigés. Contenu: Martingales à temps discret, temps d'arrêt, théorèmes de convergence. Mouvement Brownien, intégrale d'Itô, équations différentielles stochastiques, diffusions.
In a model independent discrete time financial market, we discuss the richness of the family of martingale measures in relation to different notions of Arbitrage, generated by a class $\mathcal{S}$ of significant sets, which we call Arbitrage de la classe $\mathcal{S}$. The choice of $\mathcal{S}$ reflects into the intrinsic properties of the class of polar sets of martingale measures. In particular: for S=$Ω$ absence of Model Independent Arbitrage is equivalent to the existence of a martingale measure; for $\mathcal{S}$ being the open sets, absence of Open Arbitrage is equivalent to the exist…
This work shows how exponential concentration inequalities for additive functionals of stochastic processes over a finite time interval can be derived from concentration inequalities for martingales. The approach is entirely probabilistic and naturally includes time-inhomogeneous and non-stationary processes as well as initial laws concentrated on a single point. The class of processes studied includes martingales, Markov processes and general square integrable processes. The general approach is complemented by a simple and direct method for martingales, diffusions and discrete-time Markov pro…
We show that, under certain smoothness conditions, a Brownian martingale at a fixed time can be represented as an exponential of its value at a later time. The time-dependent generator of this exponential operator is equal to one half times the Malliavin derivative. This result can also be seen as a generalization of the semi-group theory of parabolic partial differential equations to the parabolic path-dependent partial differential equations introduced by Dupire (2009) and Cont and Founié (2011). The exponential operator can be calculated explicitly in a series expansion, which resembles the…
This paper gives new concentration inequalities for the spectral norm of a wide class of matrix martingales in continuous time. These results extend previously established Freedman and Bernstein inequalities for series of random matrices to the class of continuous time processes. Our analysis relies on a new supermartingale property of the trace exponential proved within the framework of stochastic calculus. We provide also several examples that illustrate the fact that our results allow us to recover easily several formerly obtained sharp bounds for discrete time matrix martingales.
Renz (1996), Ouchti(2005), El Machkouri and Ouchti (2007) and Mourrat (2013) have established the bounds on the rate of convergence in the central limit theorem for discrete time martingales. In the present paper a modification of the methods, developed by Bolthausen (1982) and Grama and Haeusler (2000), is applied for obtaining exact rates of convergence in the central limit theorem for martingales with differences having conditional moments of order $2+ρ, ρ>0$. Our results significantly improve and generalise the bounds of Renz (1996), Ouchti(2005), El Machkouri and Ouchti (2007) and Mourrat…
We introduce a Benamou-Brenier formulation for the continuous-time martingale optimal transport problem as a weak length relaxation of its discrete-time counterpart. By the correspondence between classical martingale problems and Fokker-Planck equations, we obtain an equivalent PDE formulation for which basic properties such as existence, duality and geodesic equations can be analytically studied, yielding corresponding results for the stochastic formulation. In the one dimensional case, sufficient conditions for finiteness of the cost are also given and a link between geodesics and porous med…
We study the noncolliding random walk (RW), which is a particle system of one-dimensional, simple and symmetric RWs starting from distinct even sites and conditioned never to collide with each other. When the number of particles is finite, $N < \infty$, this discrete process is constructed as an $h$-transform of absorbing RW in the $N$-dimensional Weyl chamber. We consider Fujita's polynomial martingales of RW with time-dependent coefficients and express them by introducing a complex Markov process. It is a complexification of RW, in which independent increments of its imaginary part are in th…
We consider controlled martingales with bounded steps where the controller is allowed at each step to choose the distribution of the next step, and where the goal is to hit a fixed ball at the origin at time $n$. We show that the algebraic rate of decay (as $n$ increases to infinity) of the value function in the discrete setup coincides with its continuous counterpart, provided a reachability assumption is satisfied. We also study in some detail the uniformly elliptic case and obtain explicit bounds on the rate of decay. This generalizes and improves upon several recent studies of the one dime…
As an alternative to the well-known methods of "chaining" and "bracketing" that have been developed in the study of random fields, a new method, which is based on a {\em stochastic maximal inequality} derived by using the formula for integration by parts and on a new concept named {\em strict countability}, is presented. The main results are some weakconvergence theorems for sequences of separable random fields of discrete-time martingales under the uniform topology with the help also of entropy methods. As special cases, some new results for i.i.d.\ random sequences, including a new Donsker t…
Consider a discrete-time martingale $\{X_t\}$ taking values in a Hilbert space $\mathcal H$. We show that if for some $L \geq 1$, the bounds $\mathbb{E} \left[\|X_{t+1}-X_t\|_{\mathcal H}^2 \mid X_t\right]=1$ and $\|X_{t+1}-X_t\|_{\mathcal H} \leq L$ are satisfied for all times $t \geq 0$, then there is a constant $c = c(L)$ such that for $1 \leq R \leq \sqrt{t}$, \[\mathbb{P}(\|X_t\|_{\mathcal H} \leq R \mid X_0 = x_0) \leq c \frac{R}{\sqrt{t}} e^{-\|x_0\|_{\mathcal H}^2/(6 L^2 t)}\,.\] Following [Lee-Peres, Ann. Probab. 2013], this has applications to diffusive estimates for random walks on …
We study the problem of bounding path-dependent expectations (within any finite time horizon $d$) over the class of discrete-time martingales whose marginal distributions lie within a prescribed tolerance of a given collection of benchmark marginal distributions. This problem is a relaxation of the martingale optimal transport (MOT) problem and is motivated by applications to super-hedging in financial markets. We show that the empirical version of our relaxed MOT problem can be approximated within $O\left( n^{-1/2}\right)$ error where $n$ is the number of samples of each of the individual mar…
We show that, under certain smoothness conditions, a Brownian martingale, when evaluated at a fixed time, can be represented via an exponential formula at a later time. The time-dependent generator of this exponential operator only depends on the second order Malliavin derivative operator evaluated along a "frozen path". The exponential operator can be expanded explicitly to a series representation, which resembles the Dyson series of quantum mechanics. Our continuous-time martingale representation result can be proven independently by two different methods. In the first method, one constructs…
Our financial setting consists of a market model with two flows of information. The smallest flow F is the "public" flow of information which is available to all agents, while the larger flow G has additional information about the occurrence of a random time T. This random time can model the default time in credit risk or death time in life insurance. Hence the filtration G is the progressive enlargement of F with T. In this framework, under some mild assumptions on the pair (F, T), we describe explicitly how G-local martingales can be represented in terms of F-local martingale and parameters …
In this article, it is proved that for any cumulative distribution function with compact support and a specified t > 0, there exists a diffusion martingale which has this law at time t. The article proves existence; no claims are made about uniqueness. After a discussion on strings and associated semigroups, the article gives a re-working of a standard approach to the problem of constructing an explicit discrete time martingale diffusion on a finite state space which, for a random geometrically distributed time that is independent of the diffusion, the law of the diffusion stopped at this rand…
We consider a nondominated model of a discrete-time financial market where stocks are traded dynamically, and options are available for static hedging. In a general measure-theoretic setting, we show that absence of arbitrage in a quasi-sure sense is equivalent to the existence of a suitable family of martingale measures. In the arbitrage-free case, we show that optimal superhedging strategies exist for general contingent claims, and that the minimal superhedging price is given by the supremum over the martingale measures. Moreover, we obtain a nondominated version of the Optional Decompositio…
Lévy-type perpetuities being the a.s. limits of particular generalized Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes are a natural continuous-time generalization of discrete-time perpetuities. These are random variables of the form $S:=\int_{[0,\infty)}e^{-X_{s-}}{\mathrm{d}}Z_s$, where $(X,Z)$ is a two-dimensional Lévy process, and $Z$ is a drift-free Lévy process of bounded variation. We prove an ultimate criterion for the finiteness of power moments of $S$. This result and the previously known assertion due to Erickson and Maller (2005) concerning the a.s. finiteness of $S$ are then used to derive ultimate …
We establish a central limit theorem for (a sequence of) multivariate martingales which dimension potentially grows with the length $n$ of the martingale. A consequence of the results are Gaussian couplings and a multiplier bootstrap for the maximum of a multivariate martingale whose dimensionality $d$ can be as large as $e^{n^c}$ for some $c>0$. We also develop new anti-concentration bounds for the maximum component of a high-dimensional Gaussian vector, which we believe is of independent interest. The results are applicable to a variety of settings. We fully develop its use to the estimation…
In this paper, we will establish a discrete-time version of Clark(-Ocone-Haussmann) formula, which can be seen as an asymptotic expansion in a weak sense. The formula is applied to the estimation of the error caused by the martingale representation. In the way, we use another distribution theory with respect to Gaussian rather than Lebesgue measure, which can be seen as a discrete Malliavin calculus.
Using, as main tool, the convergence theorem for discrete martingales and the mean value property of harmonic functions we solve, a particular case of, Dirichlet problem.
We use the whole-plane Loewner equation to define a family of continuous LERW in finitely connected domains that are started from interior points. These continuous LERW satisfy conformal invariance, preserve some continuous local martingales, and are the scaling limits of the corresponding discrete LERW on the discrete approximation of the domains.
We introduce a setup of model uncertainty in discrete time. In this setup we derive dual expressions for the super--replication prices of game options with upper semicontinuous payoffs. We show that the super--replication price is equal to the supremum over a special (non dominated) set of martingale measures, of the corresponding Dynkin games values. This type of results is also new for American options.
We consider a discrete-time branching random walk in the boundary case, where the associated random walk is in the domain of attraction of an $α$-stable law with $1<α<2$. We prove that the derivative martingale $D_n$ converges to a non-trivial limit $D_\infty$ under some regular conditions. We also study the additive martingale $W_n$, and prove $n^\frac{1}αW_n$ converges in probability to a constant multiple of $D_\infty$.
This paper studies a discrete-time optimal switching problem on a finite horizon. The underlying model has a running reward, terminal reward and signed (positive and negative) switching costs. Using the martingale approach to optimal stopping problems, we extend a well known explicit dynamic programming method for computing the value function and the optimal strategy to the case of signed switching costs.
We show a decomposition into the sum of a martingale and a deterministic quantity for time averages of the solutions to non-autonomous SDEs and for discrete-time Markov processes. In the SDE case the martingale has an explicit representation in terms of the gradient of the associated semigroup or transition operator. We show how the results can be used to obtain quenched Gaussian concentration inequalities for time averages and to provide insights into the Averaging principle for two-timescale processes.
