English

Cost-efficient Payoffs under Model Ambiguity

Portfolio Management 2023-08-11 v2 Mathematical Finance

Abstract

Dybvig (1988a,b) solves in a complete market setting the problem of finding a payoff that is cheapest possible in reaching a given target distribution ("cost-efficient payoff"). In the presence of ambiguity, the distribution of a payoff is, however, no longer known with certainty. We study the problem of finding the cheapest possible payoff whose worst-case distribution stochastically dominates a given target distribution ("robust cost-efficient payoff") and determine solutions under certain conditions. We study the link between "robust cost-efficiency" and the maxmin expected utility setting of Gilboa and Schmeidler, as well as more generally with robust preferences in a possibly non-expected utility setting. Specifically, we show that solutions to maxmin robust expected utility are necessarily robust cost-efficient. We illustrate our study with examples involving uncertainty both on the drift and on the volatility of the risky asset.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2207.02948,
  title  = {Cost-efficient Payoffs under Model Ambiguity},
  author = {Carole Bernard and Gero Junike and Thibaut Lux and Steven Vanduffel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.02948},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T12:16:31.635Z