A set of data with positive values follows a Pareto distribution if the log–log plot of value versus rank is approximately a straight line. A Pareto distribution satisfies Zipf’s law if the log–log plot has a slope of $-1$. Since many types of ranked data follow Zipf’s law, it is considered a form of universality. We propose a mathematical explanation for this phenomenon based on Atlas models and first-order models, systems of strictly positive continuous semimartingales with parameters that depend only on rank. We show that the stationary distribution of an Atlas model will follow Zipf’s law if and only if two natural conditions, conservation and completeness, are satisfied. Since Atlas models and first-order models can be constructed to approximate systems of time-dependent rank-based data, our results can explain the universality of Zipf’s law for such systems. However, ranked data generated by other means may follow non-Zipfian Pareto distributions. Hence, our results explain why Zipf’s law holds for word frequency, firm size, household wealth, and city size, while it does not hold for earthquake magnitude, cumulative book sales, and the intensity of wars, all of which follow non-Zipfian Pareto distributions.

It is well understood that a supercritical superprocess is equal in law to a discrete Markov branching process whose genealogy is dressed in a Poissonian way with immigration which initiates subcritical superprocesses. The Markov branching process corresponds to the genealogical description of prolific individuals, that is, individuals who produce eternal genealogical lines of descent, and is often referred to as the skeleton or backbone of the original superprocess. The Poissonian dressing along the skeleton may be considered to be the remaining non-prolific genealogical mass in the superprocess. Such skeletal decompositions are equally well understood for continuous-state branching processes (CSBP).

In a previous article [16] we developed an SDE approach to study the skeletal representation of CSBPs, which provided a common framework for the skeletal decompositions of supercritical and (sub)critical CSBPs. It also helped us to understand how the skeleton thins down onto one infinite line of descent when conditioning on survival until larger and larger times, and eventually forever.

Here our main motivation is to show the robustness of the SDE approach by expanding it to the spatial setting of superprocesses. The current article only considers supercritical superprocesses, leaving the subcritical case open.

We construct global-in-time singular dynamics for the (renormalized) cubic fourth-order nonlinear Schrödinger equation on the circle, having the white noise measure as an invariant measure. For this purpose, we introduce the ‘random-resonant / nonlinear decomposition’, which allows us to single out the singular component of the solution. Unlike the classical McKean, Bourgain, Da Prato-Debussche type argument, this singular component is nonlinear, consisting of arbitrarily high powers of the random initial data. We also employ a random gauge transform, leading to random Fourier restriction norm spaces. For this problem, a contraction argument does not work, and we instead establish the convergence of smooth approximating solutions by studying the partially iterated Duhamel formulation under the random gauge transform. We reduce the crucial nonlinear estimates to boundedness properties of certain random multilinear functionals of the white noise.

Rumours have become part of our daily lives, and their spread has a negative impact on a variety of human affairs. Therefore, how to control the spread of rumours is an important topic. In this paper, we extend the classic Maki–Thompson model from a deterministic framework to a stochastic framework with a forgetting mechanism, because real-world person-to-person communications are inevitably affected by random factors. By constructing suitable stochastic Lyapunov functions, we show that the asymptotic behaviour of the stochastic rumour model is governed by the basic reproductive number. If this number is less than one, then the solution of the stochastic rumour model oscillates around the rumour-free equilibrium under extra mild conditions, indicating the extinction of the rumour with a probability of one. Otherwise, the solution always fluctuates around the endemic equilibrium under certain parametric restrictions, implying that the rumour will continually persist. In addition, we discuss a possible intervention strategy that stops the spread of rumours by strengthening the intensity of white noise, which is very different from the deterministic rumour model without white noise. Also, numerical simulations are conducted to support our analytical results.

In this note, we study the hyperbolic stochastic damped sine-Gordon equation (SdSG), with a parameter β2 > 0, and its associated Gibbs dynamics on the two-dimensional torus. After introducing a suitable renormalization, we first construct the Gibbs measure in the range 0 < β2 < 4π via the variational approach due to Barashkov-Gubinelli (2018). We then prove almost sure global well-posedness and invariance of the Gibbs measure under the hyperbolic SdSG dynamics in the range 0 < β2 < 2π. Our construction of the Gibbs measure also yields almost sure global well-posedness and invariance of the Gibbs measure for the parabolic sine-Gordon model in the range 0 < β2 < 4π.

In this paper, we study a class of one-dimensional stochastic differential equations driven by fractional Brownian motion with Hurst parameter $ H \gt \frac{1}{2}$. The drift term of the equation is locally Lipschitz and unbounded in the neighbourhood of the origin. We show the existence, uniqueness and positivity of the solutions. The estimates of moments, including the negative power moments, are given. We also develop the implicit Euler scheme, proved that the scheme is positivity preserving and strong convergent, and obtain rate of convergence. Furthermore, by using Lamperti transformation, we show that our results can be applied to stochastic interest rate models such as mean-reverting stochastic volatility model and strongly nonlinear Aït-Sahalia type model.

Let (Y, Z) denote the solution to a forward-backward stochastic differential equation (FBSDE). If one constructs a random walk $B^n$ from the underlying Brownian motion B by Skorokhod embedding, one can show $L_2$-convergence of the corresponding solutions $(Y^n,Z^n)$ to $(Y, Z).$ We estimate the rate of convergence based on smoothness properties, especially for a terminal condition function in $C^{2,\alpha}$. The proof relies on an approximative representation of $Z^n$ and uses the concept of discretized Malliavin calculus. Moreover, we use growth and smoothness properties of the partial differential equation associated to the FBSDE, as well as of the finite difference equations associated to the approximating stochastic equations. We derive these properties by probabilistic methods.

We consider Kolmorogov operator $-\Delta +b \cdot \nabla $ with drift b in the class of form-bounded vector fields (containing vector fields having critical-order singularities). We characterize quantitative dependence of the Sobolev and Hölder regularity of solutions to the corresponding elliptic equation on the value of the form-bound of b.

This work proposes and analyzes a family of spatially inhomogeneous epidemic models. This is our first effort to use stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs) to model epidemic dynamics with spatial variations and environmental noise. After setting up the problem, the existence and uniqueness of solutions of the underlying SPDEs are examined. Then, definitions of permanence and extinction are given, and certain sufficient conditions are provided for permanence and extinction. Our hope is that this paper will open up windows for investigation of epidemic models from a new angle.

For a one-dimensional smooth vector field in a neighborhood of an unstable equilibrium, we consider the associated dynamics perturbed by small noise. We give a revealing elementary proof of a result proved earlier using heavy machinery from Malliavin calculus. In particular, we obtain precise vanishing noise asymptotics for the tail of the exit time and for the exit distribution conditioned on atypically long exits. We also discuss our program on rare transitions in noisy heteroclinic networks.

We give a dynamic extension result of the (static) notion of a deviation measure. We also study distribution-invariant deviation measures and show that the only dynamic deviation measure which is law invariant and recursive is the variance.

In this paper, a reflected stochastic differential equation (SDE) with jumps is studied for the case where the constraint acts on the law of the solution rather than on its paths. These reflected SDEs have been approximated by Briand et al. (2016) using a numerical scheme based on particles systems, when no jumps occur. The main contribution of this paper is to prove the existence and the uniqueness of the solutions to this kind of reflected SDE with jumps and to generalize the results obtained by Briand et al. (2016) to this context.

We consider the well-posedness of a stochastic evolution problem in a bounded Lipschitz domain D ⊂ ℝd with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions and an initial condition in L2(D). The main technical difficulties in proving the result of existence and uniqueness of a solution arise from the nonlinear diffusion-convection operator in divergence form which is given by the sum of a Carathéodory function satisfying p-type growth associated with coercivity assumptions and a Lipschitz continuous perturbation. In particular, we consider the case 1 < p < 2 with an appropriate lower bound on p determined by the space dimension. Another difficulty arises from the fact that the additive stochastic perturbation with values in L2(D) on the right-hand side of the equation does not inherit the Sobolev spatial regularity from the solution as in the multiplicative noise case.

We develop in this work a general version of paracontrolled calculus that allows to treat analytically within this paradigm a whole class of singular partial differential equations with the same efficiency as regularity structures. This work deals with the analytic side of the story and offers a toolkit for the study of such equations, under the form of a number of continuity results for some operators, while emphasizing the simple and systematic mechanics of computations within paracontrolled calculus, via the introduction of two model operations $\mathsf{E}$ and $\mathsf{F}$. We illustrate the efficiency of this elementary approach on the example of the generalized parabolic Anderson model equation

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$(1+1)$

We present a discrete-type approximation scheme to solve continuous-time optimal stopping problems based on fully non-Markovian continuous processes adapted to the Brownian motion filtration. The approximations satisfy suitable variational inequalities which allow us to construct $\varepsilon$-optimal stopping times and optimal values in full generality. Explicit rates of convergence are presented for optimal values based on reward functionals of path-dependent stochastic differential equations driven by fractional Brownian motion. In particular, the methodology allows us to design concrete Monte Carlo schemes for non-Markovian optimal stopping time problems as demonstrated in the companion paper by Bezerra et al.

We find explicit estimates for the exponential rate of long-term convergence for the ruin probability in a level-dependent Lévy-driven risk model, as time goes to infinity. Siegmund duality allows us to reduce the problem to long-term convergence of a reflected jump-diffusion to its stationary distribution, which is handled via Lyapunov functions.

It is well understood that a supercritical continuous-state branching process (CSBP) is equal in law to a discrete continuous-time Galton–Watson process (the skeleton of prolific individuals) whose edges are dressed in a Poissonian way with immigration which initiates subcritical CSBPs (non-prolific mass). Equally well understood in the setting of CSBPs and superprocesses is the notion of a spine or immortal particle dressed in a Poissonian way with immigration which initiates copies of the original CSBP, which emerges when conditioning the process to survive eternally. In this article we revisit these notions for CSBPs and put them in a common framework using the well-established language of (coupled) stochastic differential equations (SDEs). In this way we are able to deal simultaneously with all types of CSBPs (supercritical, critical, and subcritical) as well as understanding how the skeletal representation becomes, in the sense of weak convergence, a spinal decomposition when conditioning on survival. We have two principal motivations. The first is to prepare the way to expand the SDE approach to the spatial setting of superprocesses, where recent results have increasingly sought the use of skeletal decompositions to transfer results from the branching particle setting to the setting of measure valued processes. The second is to provide a pathwise decomposition of CSBPs in the spirit of genealogical coding of CSBPs via Lévy excursions, albeit precisely where the aforesaid coding fails to work because the underlying CSBP is supercritical.

We study a rough differential equation driven by fractional Brownian motion with Hurst parameter $H$$(1/4<H\leqslant 1/2)$. Under Hörmander’s condition on the coefficient vector fields, the solution has a smooth density for each fixed time. Using Watanabe’s distributional Malliavin calculus, we obtain a short time full asymptotic expansion of the density under quite natural assumptions. Our main result can be regarded as a “fractional version” of Ben Arous’ famous work on the off-diagonal asymptotics.

We introduce variance-optimal semi-static hedging strategies for a given contingent claim. To obtain a tractable formula for the expected squared hedging error and the optimal hedging strategy we use a Fourier approach in a multidimensional factor model. We apply the theory to set up a variance-optimal semi-static hedging strategy for a variance swap in the Heston model, which is affine, in the 3/2 model, which is not, and in a market model including jumps.

Asset allocation with a derivative security is studied in a hidden, Markovian regime-switching, economy using filtering theory and the martingale approach. A generalized delta-hedged ratio and a generalized elasticity of an option are introduced to accommodate the presence of the information state process and the derivative security. Malliavin calculus is applied to derive a solution for a general utility function which includes an exponential utility, a power utility, and a logarithmic utility. A compact solution is obtained for a logarithmic utility. Some economic implications of the solutions are discussed.