Consider a general bivariate Lévy-driven risk model. The surplus process Y, starting with Y0=x > 0, evolves according to dYt= Yt- dRt -dPt for t > 0, where P and R are two independent Lévy processes respectively representing a loss process in a world without economic factors and a process describing the return on investments in real terms. Motivated by a conjecture of Paulsen, we study the finite-time and infinite-time ruin probabilities for the case in which the loss process P has a Lévy measure of extended regular variation and the stochastic exponential of R fulfills a moment condition. We obtain a simple and unified asymptotic formula as x→∞, which confirms Paulsen's conjecture.

We study asymptotically optimal simulation algorithms for approximating the tail probability of P(eX1+⋯+ eXd>u) as u→∞. The first algorithm proposed is based on conditional Monte Carlo and assumes that (X1,…,Xd) has an elliptical distribution with very mild assumptions on the radial component. This algorithm is applicable to a large class of models in finance, as we demonstrate with examples. In addition, we propose an importance sampling algorithm for an arbitrary dependence structure that is shown to be asymptotically optimal under mild assumptions on the marginal distributions and, basically, that we can simulate efficiently (X1,…,Xd|Xj >b) for large b. Extensions that allow us to handle portfolios of financial options are also discussed.

In this paper we study the tail behavior of the maximum exceedance of a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables over a random walk. For both light-tailed and heavy-tailed cases, we derive a precise asymptotic formula, which extends and unifies some existing results in the recent literature of applied probability.

We consider a dependent portfolio of insurance contracts. Asymptotic tail probabilities of the ECOMOR and LCR reinsurance amounts are obtained under certain assumptions about the dependence structure.

Consider a sequence {Xk, k ≥ 1} of random variables on (−∞, ∞). Results on the asymptotic tail probabilities of the quantities , and S(n) = max0 ≤ k ≤ nSk, with X0 = 0 and n ≥ 1, are well known in the case where the random variables are independent with a heavy-tailed (subexponential) distribution. In this paper we investigate the validity of these results under more general assumptions. We consider extensions under the assumptions of having long-tailed distributions (the class L) and having the class D ∩ L, where D is the class of distribution functions with dominatedly varying tails. Some results are also given in the case where Xk, k ≥ 1, are not necessarily identically distributed and/or independent.

Let {Xk, k=1,2,…} be a sequence of independent random variables with common subexponential distribution F, and let {wk, k=1,2,…} be a sequence of positive numbers. Under some mild summability conditions, we establish simple asymptotic estimates for the extreme tail probabilities of both the weighted sum ∑k=1nwkXk and the maximum of weighted sums max1≤m≤n∑k=1mwkXk, subject to the requirement that they should hold uniformly for n=1,2,…. Potentially, a direct application of the result is to risk analysis, where the ruin probability is to be evaluated for a company having gross loss Xk during the kth year, with a discount or inflation factor wk.

Let {X k , k ≥ 1} be a sequence of independently and identically distributed random variables with common subexponential distribution function concentrated on (−∞, ∞), and let τ be a nonnegative and integer-valued random variable with a finite mean and which is independent of the sequence {X k , k ≥ 1}. This paper investigates asymptotic behavior of the tail probabilities P(· > x) and the local probabilities P(x < · ≤ x + h) of the quantities and for n ≥ 1, and their randomized versions X (τ), S τ and S (τ), where X 0 = 0 by convention and h > 0 is arbitrarily fixed.

Suppose that {Xs, 0 ≤ s ≤ T} is an m-dimensional geometric Brownian motion with drift, μ is a bounded positive Borel measure on [0,T], and ϕ : ℝm → [0,∞) is a (weighted) lq(ℝm)-norm, 1 ≤ q ≤ ∞. The purpose of this paper is to study the distribution and the moments of the random variable Y given by the Lp(μ)-norm, 1 ≤ p ≤ ∞, of the function s ↦ ϕ(Xs), 0 ≤ s ≤ T. By using various geometric inequalities in Wiener space, this paper gives upper and lower bounds for the distribution function of Y and proves that the distribution function is log-concave and absolutely continuous on every open subset of the distribution's support. Moreover, the paper derives tail probabilities, presents sharp moment inequalities, and shows that Y is indetermined by its moments. The paper will also discuss the so-called moment-matching method for the pricing of Asian-styled basket options.

In this paper we study the supremum distribution of a class of Gaussian processes having stationary increments and negative drift using key results from Extreme Value Theory. We focus on deriving an asymptotic upper bound to the tail of the supremum distribution of such processes. Our bound is valid for both discrete- and continuous-time processes. We discuss the importance of the bound, its applicability to queueing problems, and show numerical examples to illustrate its performance.

The validity of the saddlepoint expansion evaluated at the point y is considered in the limit y tending to ∞. This is done for the expansions of the density and of the tail probability of the mean of n i.i.d. random variables and also for the expansion of the tail probability of a compound Poisson sum , where N is a Poisson random variable. We consider both general conditions that ensure the validity of the expansions and study the four classes of densities for X1 introduced in Daniels (1954).

A saddlepoint expansion is given for conditional probabilities of the form where is an average of n independent bivariate random vectors. A more general version, corresponding to the conditioning on a p – 1-dimensional linear function of a p-dimensional variable is also included. A separate formula is given for the lattice case. The expansion is a generalization of the Lugannani and Rice (1980) formula, which reappears if and are independent. As an example an approximation to the hypergeometric distribution is derived.