In this paper we extend the existing literature on the asymptotic behavior of the partial sums and the sample covariances of long-memory stochastic volatility models in the case of infinite variance. We also consider models with leverage, for which our results are entirely new in the infinite-variance case. Depending on the interplay between the tail behavior and the intensity of dependence, two types of convergence rates and limiting distributions can arise. In particular, we show that the asymptotic behavior of partial sums is the same for both long memory in stochastic volatility and models with leverage, whereas there is a crucial difference when sample covariances are considered.

Many prominent continuous-time stochastic volatility models exhibit certain functional relationships between price jumps and volatility jumps. We show that stochastic volatility models like the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck and other continuous-time CARMA models as well as continuous-time GARCH and EGARCH models all exhibit such functional relations. We investigate the asymptotic behaviour of certain functionals of price and volatility processes for discrete observations of the price process on a grid, which are relevant for estimation and testing problems.

In this paper we deal with an M/G/1 vacation system with the sojourn time (wait plus service) limit and two typical vacation rules, i.e. multiple and single vacation rules. Using the level crossing approach, we derive recursive equations for the steady-state distributions of the virtual waiting times in M/G/1 vacation systems with a general vacation time and two vacation rules.

Based on the explicit coupling property, the ergodicity and the exponential ergodicity of Lévy-driven Ornstein–Uhlenbeck processes are established.

We study mean-variance hedging under portfolio constraints in a general semimartingale model. The constraints are formulated via predictable correspondences, meaning that the trading strategy is restricted to lie in a closed convex set which may depend on the state and time in a predictable way. To obtain the existence of a solution, we first establish the closedness in L 2 of the space of all gains from trade (i.e. the terminal values of stochastic integrals with respect to the price process of the underlying assets). This is a first main contribution which enables us to tackle the problem in a systematic and unified way. In addition, using the closedness allows us to explain and generalise in a systematic way the convex duality results obtained previously by other authors via ad-hoc methods in specific frameworks.

For stationary fiber processes, the estimation of the directional distribution is an important task. We consider a stereological approach, assuming that the intersection points of the process with a finite number of test hyperplanes can be observed in a bounded window. The intensity of these intersection processes is proportional to the cosine transform of the directional distribution. We use the approximate inverse method to invert the cosine transform and analyze asymptotic properties of the estimator in growing windows for Poisson line processes. We show almost-sure convergence of the estimator and derive Berry–Esseen bounds, including formulae for the variance.

The risk processes considered in this paper are generated by an underlying Markov process with a regenerative structure and an independent sequence of independent and identically distributed claims. Between the arrivals of claims the process increases at a rate which is a nonnegative function of the present value of the Markov process. The intensity for a claim to occur is another nonnegative function of the value of the Markov process. The claim arrival times are the regeneration times for the Markov process. Two-sided claims are allowed, but the distribution of the positive claims is assumed to have a Laplace transform that is a rational function. The main results describe the joint Laplace transform of the time at ruin and the deficit at ruin. The method used consists in finding partial eigenfunctions for the generator of the joint process consisting of the Markov process and the accumulated claims process, a joint process which is also Markov. These partial eigenfunctions are then used to find a martingale that directly leads to an expression for the desired Laplace transform. In the final section, three examples are given involving different types of the underlying Markov process.

We introduce a new approach to simulating rare events for Markov random walks with heavy-tailed increments. This approach involves sequential importance sampling and resampling, and uses a martingale representation of the corresponding estimate of the rare-event probability to show that it is unbiased and to bound its variance. By choosing the importance measures and resampling weights suitably, it is shown how this approach can yield asymptotically efficient Monte Carlo estimates.

For a Borel set A and a homogeneous Poisson point process η in of intensity λ>0, define the Poisson–Voronoi approximation A η of A as a union of all Voronoi cells with nuclei from η lying in A. If A has a finite volume and perimeter, we find an exact asymptotic of E Vol(AΔ A η) as λ→∞, where Vol is the Lebesgue measure. Estimates for all moments of Vol(A η) and Vol(AΔ A η) together with their asymptotics for large λ are obtained as well.

Let {X i} be a sequence of independent, identically distributed random variables with an intermediate regularly varying right tail F̄. Let (N, C 1, C 2,…) be a nonnegative random vector independent of the {X i } with N∈ℕ∪ {∞}. We study the weighted random sum S N =∑{i=1} N C i X i , and its maximum, M N =sup{1≤k N+1∑i=1 k C i X i . This type of sum appears in the analysis of stochastic recursions, including weighted branching processes and autoregressive processes. In particular, we derive conditions under which P(M N > x)∼ P(S N > x)∼ E[∑i=1 N F̄(x/C i )] as x→∞. When E[X 1]>0 and the distribution of Z N =∑ i=1 N C i is also intermediate regularly varying, we obtain the asymptotics P(M N > x)∼ P(S N > x)∼ E[∑i=1 N F̄}(x/C i )] +P(Z N > x/E[X 1]). For completeness, when the distribution of Z N is intermediate regularly varying and heavier than F̄, we also obtain conditions under which the asymptotic relations P(M N > x) ∼ P(S N > x)∼ P(Z N > x / E[X 1 ] hold.

We extend the class of tempered stable distributions, which were first introduced in Rosiński (2007). Our new class allows for more structure and more variety of the tail behaviors. We discuss various subclasses and the relations between them. To characterize the possible tails, we give detailed results about finiteness of various moments. We also give necessary and sufficient conditions for the tails to be regularly varying. This last part allows us to characterize the domain of attraction to which a particular tempered stable distribution belongs.

In this paper we study the functional central limit theorem (CLT) for stationary Markov chains with a self-adjoint operator and general state space. We investigate the case when the variance of the partial sum is not asymptotically linear in n, and establish that conditional convergence in distribution of partial sums implies the functional CLT. The main tools are maximal inequalities that are further exploited to derive conditions for tightness and convergence to the Brownian motion.

In this paper we study the distribution of the location, at time t, of a particle moving U time units upwards, V time units downwards, and W time units of no movement (idle). These are repeated cyclically, according to independent alternating renewals. The distributions of U, V, and W are absolutely continuous. The velocities are v = +1 upwards, v = -1 downwards, and v = 0 during idle periods. Let Y +(t), Y −(t), and Y 0(t) denote the total time in (0, t) of movements upwards, downwards, and no movements, respectively. The exact distribution of Y +(t) is derived. We also obtain the probability law of X(t) = Y +(t) - Y −(t), which describes the particle's location at time t. Explicit formulae are derived for the cases of exponential distributions with equal rates, with different rates, and with linear rates (leading to damped processes).

We aim to link random fields and marked point processes, and, therefore, introduce a new class of stochastic processes which are defined on a random set in . Unlike for random fields, the mark covariance function of a random marked set is in general not positive definite. This implies that in many situations the use of simple geostatistical methods appears to be questionable. Surprisingly, for a special class of processes based on Gaussian random fields, we do have positive definiteness for the corresponding mark covariance function and mark correlation function.

We study quasistationary distributions on a drifted Brownian motion killed at 0, when +∞ is an entrance boundary and 0 is an exit boundary. We prove the existence of a unique quasistationary distribution and of the Yaglom limit.

An asset manager invests the savings of some investors in a portfolio of defaultable bonds. The manager pays the investors coupons at a constant rate and receives a management fee proportional to the value of the portfolio. He/she also has the right to walk out of the contract at any time with the net terminal value of the portfolio after payment of the investors' initial funds, and is not responsible for any deficit. To control the principal losses, investors may buy from the manager a limited protection which terminates the agreement as soon as the value of the portfolio drops below a predetermined threshold. We assume that the value of the portfolio is a jump diffusion process and find an optimal termination rule of the manager with and without protection. We also derive the indifference price of a limited protection. We illustrate the solution method on a numerical example. The motivation comes from the collateralized debt obligations.

Let {X t , t ≥ 1} be a sequence of identically distributed and pairwise asymptotically independent random variables with regularly varying tails, and let {Θt , t ≥ 1} be a sequence of positive random variables independent of the sequence {X t , t ≥ 1}. We will discuss the tail probabilities and almost-sure convergence of X (∞) = ∑t=1 ∞Θt X t + (where X + = max{0, X}) and max1≤k<∞∑t=1 k Θt X t , and provide some sufficient conditions motivated by Denisov and Zwart (2007) as alternatives to the usual moment conditions. In particular, we illustrate how the conditions on the slowly varying function involved in the tail probability of X 1 help to control the tail behavior of the randomly weighted sums. Note that, the above results allow us to choose X 1, X 2,… as independent and identically distributed positive random variables. If X 1 has a regularly varying tail of index -α, where α > 0, and if {Θt , t ≥ 1} is a positive sequence of random variables independent of {X t }, then it is known – which can also be obtained from the sufficient conditions in this article – that, under some appropriate moment conditions on {Θt , t ≥ 1}, X (∞) = ∑t=1 ∞Θt X t converges with probability 1 and has a regularly varying tail of index -α. Motivated by the converse problems in Jacobsen, Mikosch, Rosiński and Samorodnitsky (2009) we ask the question: if X (∞) has a regularly varying tail then does X 1 have a regularly varying tail under some appropriate conditions? We obtain appropriate sufficient moment conditions, including the nonvanishing Mellin transform of ∑t=1 ∞Θt along some vertical line in the complex plane, so that the above is true. We also show that the condition on the Mellin transform cannot be dropped.

We study generalized branching random walks on the real line R that allow time dependence and local dependence between siblings. Specifically, starting from one particle at time 0, the system evolves such that each particle lives for one unit amount of time, gives birth independently to a random number of offspring according to some branching law, and dies. The offspring from a single particle are assumed to move to new locations on R according to some joint displacement distribution; the branching laws and displacement distributions depend on time. At time n, F n (·) is used to denote the distribution function of the position of the rightmost particle in generation n. Under appropriate tail assumptions on the branching laws and offspring displacement distributions, we prove that F n (· - Med(F n )) is tight in n, where Med(F n ) is the median of F n . The main part of the argument is to demonstrate the exponential decay of the right tail 1 - F n (· - Med(F n )).

Let (X t )0 ≤ t ≤ T be a one-dimensional stochastic process with independent and stationary increments, either in discrete or continuous time. In this paper we consider the problem of stopping the process (X t ) ‘as close as possible’ to its eventual supremum M T := sup0 ≤ t ≤ T X t , when the reward for stopping at time τ ≤ T is a nonincreasing convex function of M T - X τ. Under fairly general conditions on the process (X t ), it is shown that the optimal stopping time τ takes a trivial form: it is either optimal to stop at time 0 or at time T. For the case of a random walk, the rule τ ≡ T is optimal if the steps of the walk stochastically dominate their opposites, and the rule τ ≡ 0 is optimal if the reverse relationship holds. An analogous result is proved for Lévy processes with finite Lévy measure. The result is then extended to some processes with nonfinite Lévy measure, including stable processes, CGMY processes, and processes whose jump component is of finite variation.

We illustrate how Basu's theorem can be used to derive the spatial version of the Wiener-Hopf factorization for a specific class of piecewise-deterministic Markov processes. The classical factorization results for both random walks and Lévy processes follow immediately from our result. The approach is particularly elegant when used to establish the factorization for spectrally one-sided Lévy processes.