Equivalent Martingale Measures and Lévy Processes

In this paper we compute equivalent martingale measures when the asset price return is modeled by a Lévy process. We follow the approach introduced by Gerber and Shiu (1994).Lévy Processes, Equivalent Martingale Measures

How viable are spanish credit cooperatives after recent bank capitalization and restructuring regulations?

Over the past three years, major reforms have been approved in Spain in order to restructure the banking sector. The purpose of these reforms has been to reinforce the solvency of credit institutions through recapitalization and integration into larger organizations. The credit cooperatives have not presented any solvency problems which would justify these measures being applied to them. The problem that the financial authorities see in their case is their limited size. As a result, the credit cooperatives are immersed in an integration process which is not revolving around the Banco Cooperativo Español (BCE) or the Spanish Association of Rural Savings Banks, as might be expected, but is taking place through mergers between individual institutions and the setting up of various cooperative groups. While the credit cooperatives have not been channelled into bankization (conversion into banks) like the savings banks, ways to become banks have been opened up to them.Cooperative credit, legislation, financial crisis, restructuring process, Spain.

A Study of the Impact of the Phividec Industrial Estate

This article is a product of a nine-month training and application program implemented by the micro component of the Economic and Social Impact Analysis/Women in Development (ESIA/WID) and the Food Systems Program of the East-West Center Resource Systems Institute (RSI). Since the industrial estate has yet to be completed, this article presents an impact evaluation of the project based on its accomplishment on the basis of its expected full benefits. This is in the hope of providing a foundation for policy strengthening and alteration.industry sector, infrastructure, survey method, impact analysis

Linking agrobiodiversity and culture through the adoption of agroforestry practices: The Agroforestry Indigenous Agents

Agroforestry is the result of a dialectical relationship between humans and the environment, capable of increasing agricultural biodiversity. In the Brazilian Amazon region, Agroforestry Indigenous Agents have been disseminating these practices through participatory processes. They combine traditional knowledge and new techniques and technologies in order to ensure food security, improve environmental conservation, and guarantee a good quality of life. They promote behavior change towards more sustainable land management practices through knowledge sharing

Duality and Derivative Pricing with Lévy Processes

The aim of this work is to use a duality approach to study the pricing of derivatives depending on two stocks driven by a bidimensional Lévy process. The main idea is to apply Girsanov's Theorem for Lévy processes, in order to reduce the posed problem to the pricing of a one Lévy driven stock in an auxiliary market, baptized as "dual market". In this way, we extend the results obtained by Gerber and Shiu (1996) for two dimensional Brownian motion. Also we examine an existing relation between prices of put and call options, of both the European and the American type. This relation, based on a change of numeraire corresponding to a change of the probability measure through Girsanov's Theorem, is called put-call duality. It includes as a particular case, the relation known as put-call symmetry. Necessary and sufficient conditions for put-call symmetry to hold are obtained, in terms of the triplet of predictable characteristic of the Lévy process.Lévy processes, Optimal stopping, Girsanov's Theorem, Dual Market Method, Derivative pricing, Symmetry

Symmetry and Time Changed Brownian Motions

In this paper we examine which Brownian Subordination with drift exhibits the symmetry property introduced by Fajardo and Mordecki (2006b). We obtain that when the subordination results in a Lévy process, a necessary and sufficient condition for the symmetry to hold is that drift must be equal to -1/2.Time Changed, Subordination, Symmetry

Generalized Hyperbolic Distributions and Brazilian Data

The aim of this paper is to discuss the use of the Generalized Hyperbolic Distributions to fit Brazilian assets returns. Selected subclasses are compared regarding goodness of fit statistics and distances. Empirical results show that these distributions fit data well. Then we show how to use these distributions in value at risk estimation and derivative price computation.

Multivariate Affine Generalized Hyperbolic Distributions: An Empirical Investigation

The aim of this paper is to estimate the Multivariate Affine Generalized distributions (MAGH) using market data. We use Ibovespa, CAC, DAX, FTSE, NIKKEI and S&P500 indexes. We estimate the univariate distributions, the bi-variate distributions and the 6-dimensional distribution. Then, we asses their goodness of fit using Kolmogorov distances.Generalized Hyperbolic Distributions, Multivariate distributions, Affine transformation, Fat tails