Applied Stochastic Models And Control In Management

Applied Stochastic Models and Control for Finance and Insurance presents at an introductory level some essential stochastic models applied in economics, finance and insurance. Markov chains, random walks, stochastic differential equations and other stochastic processes are used throughout the book and systematically applied to economic and financial applications. In addition, a dynamic programming framework is used to deal with some basic optimization problems. The book begins by introducing problems of economics, finance and insurance which involve time, uncertainty and risk. A number of cases are treated in detail, spanning risk management, volatility, memory, the time structure of preferences, interest rates and yields, etc. The second and third chapters provide an introduction to stochastic models and their application. Stochastic differential equations and stochastic calculus are presented in an intuitive manner, and numerous applications and exercises are used to facilitate their understanding and their use in Chapter 3. A number of other processes which are increasingly used in finance and insurance are introduced in Chapter 4. In the fifth chapter, ARCH and GARCH models are presented and their application to modeling volatility is emphasized. An outline of decision-making procedures is presented in Chapter 6. Furthermore, we also introduce the essentials of stochastic dynamic programming and control, and provide first steps for the student who seeks to apply these techniques. Finally, in Chapter 7, numerical techniques and approximations to stochastic processes are examined. This book can be used in business, economics, financial engineering and decision sciences schools for second year Master's students, as well as in a number of courses widely given in departments of statistics, systems and decision sciences.

Stochastic control plays an important role in many scientific and applied disciplines including communications, engineering, medicine, finance and many others. It is one of the effective methods being used to find optimal decision-making strategies in applications. The book provides a collection of outstanding investigations in various aspects of stochastic systems and their behavior. The book provides a self-contained treatment on practical aspects of stochastic modeling and calculus including applications drawn from engineering, statistics, and computer science. Readers should be familiar with basic probability theory and have a working knowledge of stochastic calculus. PhD students and researchers in stochastic control will find this book useful.

With this book, distinguished and notable contributors wish to honor Professor Charles S. Tapiero’s scientific achievements. Although it covers only a few of the directions Professor Tapiero has taken in his work, it presents important modern developments in theory and in diverse applications, as studied by his colleagues and followers, further advancing the topics Tapiero has been investigating. The book is divided into three parts featuring original contributions covering the following areas: general modeling and analysis; applications to marketing, economy and finance; and applications to operations and manufacturing. Professor Tapiero is among the most active researchers in control theory; in the late sixties, he started to enthusiastically promote optimal control theory along with differential games, successfully applying it to diverse problems ranging from classical operations research models to finance, risk and insurance, marketing, transportation and operations management, conflict management and game theory, engineering, regional and urban sciences, environmental economics, and organizational behavior. Over the years, Professor Tapiero has produced over 300 papers and communications and 14 books, which have had a major impact on modern theoretical and applied research. Notable among his numerous pioneering scientific contributions are the use of graph theory in the behavioral sciences, the modeling of advertising as a random walk, the resolution of stochastic zero-sum differential games, the modeling of quality control as a stochastic competitive game, and the development of impulsive control methods in management. Charles Tapiero’s creativity applies both in formulating original issues, modeling complex phenomena and solving complex mathematical problems.

This new 4th edition offers an introduction to optimal control theory and its diverse applications in management science and economics. It introduces students to the concept of the maximum principle in continuous (as well as discrete) time by combining dynamic programming and Kuhn-Tucker theory. While some mathematical background is needed, the emphasis of the book is not on mathematical rigor, but on modeling realistic situations encountered in business and economics. It applies optimal control theory to the functional areas of management including finance, production and marketing, as well as the economics of growth and of natural resources. In addition, it features material on stochastic Nash and Stackelberg differential games and an adverse selection model in the principal-agent framework. Exercises are included in each chapter, while the answers to selected exercises help deepen readers’ understanding of the material covered. Also included are appendices of supplementary material on the solution of differential equations, the calculus of variations and its ties to the maximum principle, and special topics including the Kalman filter, certainty equivalence, singular control, a global saddle point theorem, Sethi-Skiba points, and distributed parameter systems. Optimal control methods are used to determine optimal ways to control a dynamic system. The theoretical work in this field serves as the foundation for the book, in which the author applies it to business management problems developed from his own research and classroom instruction. The new edition has been refined and updated, making it a valuable resource for graduate courses on applied optimal control theory, but also for financial and industrial engineers, economists, and operational researchers interested in applying dynamic optimization in their fields.

Volume 1: Deterministic Modeling, Methods and Analysis For more than half a century, stochastic calculus and stochastic differential equations have played a major role in analyzing the dynamic phenomena in the biological and physical sciences, as well as engineering. The advancement of knowledge in stochastic differential equations is spreading rapidly across the graduate and postgraduate programs in universities around the globe. This will be the first available book that can be used in any undergraduate/graduate stochastic modeling/applied mathematics courses and that can be used by an interdisciplinary researcher with a minimal academic background. An Introduction to Differential Equations: Volume 2 is a stochastic version of Volume 1 (“An Introduction to Differential Equations: Deterministic Modeling, Methods and Analysis”). Both books have a similar design, but naturally, differ by calculi. Again, both volumes use an innovative style in the presentation of the topics, methods and concepts with adequate preparation in deterministic Calculus. Errata Errata (32 KB)

"Constructive Computation in Stochastic Models with Applications: The RG-Factorizations" provides a unified, constructive and algorithmic framework for numerical computation of many practical stochastic systems. It summarizes recent important advances in computational study of stochastic models from several crucial directions, such as stationary computation, transient solution, asymptotic analysis, reward processes, decision processes, sensitivity analysis as well as game theory. Graduate students, researchers and practicing engineers in the field of operations research, management sciences, applied probability, computer networks, manufacturing systems, transportation systems, insurance and finance, risk management and biological sciences will find this book valuable. Dr. Quan-Lin Li is an Associate Professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering of Tsinghua University, China.