This hub holds the mathematical engine room of quantitative finance: stochastic control (choose a policy that steers a diffusion), optimal stopping (choose a time to act), and the machinery that solves them — Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equations, viscosity solutions, backward stochastic differential equations, and mean-field games for the many-player limit. The classic applications are Merton-style consumption and investment, optimal liquidation, dividend and reinsurance control, and American-option exercise.
Most papers here are Lab Rats by our scoring: deep theory, little or no data. That is not a criticism of the work, but it changes how you read it. The questions that matter are whether the model’s state variables are observable in practice, whether the closed-form or numerical solution degrades gracefully when parameters are estimated rather than known, and whether a paper that claims a strategy ever confronts it with transaction costs or discrete rebalancing. The handful of papers that pair a control result with a calibrated numerical study rank highest below.
Related hubs: Options & Derivatives, Portfolio Optimization, HFT & Optimal Execution, Insurance & Actuarial Risk.
The decision to annuitize wealth in retirement planning has become increasingly complex due to rising longevity risk and changing retirement patterns, including increased labor force participation at older ages. While an extensive literature studies consumption, labor, and annuitization decisions, t
We consider an agent who has access to a financial market, including derivative contracts, who looks to maximise her utility. Whilst the agent looks to maximise utility over one probability measure, or class of probability measures, she must also ensure that the mark-to-market value of her portfolio
We study a continuous-time portfolio choice problem for an investor whose state-dependent preferences are determined by an exogenous factor that evolves as an Itô diffusion process. Since risk attitudes at the end of the investment horizon are uncertain, terminal wealth is evaluated under a set of u
We develop a robust linear-quadratic mean-field control framework for systemic risk under model uncertainty, in which a central bank jointly optimizes interest rate policy and supervisory monitoring intensity against adversarial distortions. Our model features multiple policy instruments with intera
In this paper, we study an optimal dividend and capital-injection problem in a Cramér–Lundberg model where claim arrivals follow a Hawkes process, capturing clustering effects often observed in insurance portfolios. We establish key analytical properties of the value function and characterise the o
A mutual insurance company (MIC) is a type of consumer cooperative owned by its policyholders. By purchasing insurance from an MIC, policyholders effectively become member-owners of the company and are entitled to a share of the surplus, which is determined by their own collective claims and premium
In this work, we extend deep learning-based numerical methods to fully coupled forward-backward stochastic differential equations (FBSDEs) within a non-Markovian framework. Error estimates and convergence are provided. In contrast to the existing literature, our approach not only analyzes the non-Ma
We apply the theory of McKean-Vlasov-type SDEs to study several problems related to market efficiency in the context of partial information and partially observable financial markets: (i) convergence of reduced-information market price processes to the true price process under an increasing informat
Stablecoins promise par convertibility, yet issuers must balance immediate liquidity against yield on reserves to keep the peg credible. We study this treasury problem as a continuous-time control task with two instruments: reallocating reserves between cash and short-duration government bills, and
We study S-shaped utility maximisation with VaR constraint and unobservable drift coefficient. Using the Bayesian filter, the concavification principle, and the change of measure, we give a semi-closed integral representation for the dual value function and find a critical wealth level that determin
We present a continuous-time portfolio selection framework that reflects goal-based investment principles and mental accounting behavior. In this framework, an investor with multiple investment goals constructs separate portfolios, each corresponding to a specific goal, with penalties imposed on fun
We present here some results for the PDE related to the logHeston model. We present different regularity results and prove a verification theorem that shows that the solution produced via the Feynman-Kac theorem is the unique viscosity solution for a wide choice of initial data (even discontinuous)
We study optimal dividend strategies for an insurance company facing natural catastrophe claims, anticipating the arrival of a climate tipping point after which the claim intensity and/or the claim size distribution of the underlying risks deteriorates irreversibly. Extending earlier literature base
In this paper, we investigate the Markovian iteration method for solving coupled forward-backward stochastic differential equations (FBSDEs) featuring a fully coupled forward drift, meaning the drift term explicitly depends on both the forward and backward processes. An FBSDE system typically involv
In mathematical finance, many derivatives from markets with frictions can be formulated as optimal control problems in the HJB framework. Analytical optimal control can result in highly nonlinear PDEs, which might yield unstable numerical results. Accurate and convergent numerical schemes are essent
The monotone mean-variance (MMV) preference proposed by Maccheroni, et al. (Math. Finance 19(3): 487-521, 2009) fails to differentiate strictly dominant payoffs, which may cause inconsistency in portfolio decision-making. This paper introduces a broader class of strictly monotone mean-variance (SMMV
This paper studies the pricing of contingent claims of American style, using indifference pricing by fully dynamic convex risk measures. We provide a general definition of risk-indifference prices for buyers and sellers in continuous time, in a setting where buyer and seller have potentially differe
Motivated by recent empirical findings on the periodic phenomenon of aggregated market volumes in equity markets, we aim to understand the causes and consequences of periodic trading activities through a game-theoretic perspective, examining market interactions among different types of participants.
We consider a central trading desk which aggregates the inflow of clients’ orders with unobserved toxicity, i.e. persistent adverse directionality. The desk chooses either to internalise the inflow or externalise it to the market in a cost effective manner. In this model, externalising the order flo
We investigate propagation of convexity and convex ordering on a typical discrete-time stochastic optimal control problem, namely the pricing of swing option. The dynamics of the underlying asset is modelled by the Euler scheme of a Brownian diffusion with affine drift, and convex volatility. We pro