Giorgio Consigli - Böcker

This volume presents a collection of contributions dedicated to applied problems in the financial and energy sectors that have been formulated and solved in a stochastic optimization framework. The invited authors represent a group of scientists and practitioners, who cooperated in recent years to facilitate the growing penetration of stochastic programming techniques in real-world applications, inducing a significant advance over a large spectrum of complex decision problems.After the recent widespread liberalization of the energy sector in Europe and the unprecedented growth of energy prices in international commodity markets, we have witnessed a significant convergence of strategic decision problems in the energy and financial sectors. This has often resulted in common open issues and has induced a remarkable effort by the industrial and scientific communities to facilitate the adoption of advanced analytical and decision tools. The main concerns of the financial community over the last decade have suddenly penetrated the energy sector inducing a remarkable scientific and practical effort to address previously unforeseeable management problems. Stochastic Optimization Methods in Finance and Energy: New Financial Products and Energy Markets Strategies aims to include in a unified framework for the first time an extensive set of contributions related to real-world applied problems in finance and energy, leading to a common methodological approach and in many cases having similar underlying economic and financial implications. Part 1 of the book presents 6 chapters related to financial applications; Part 2 presents 7 chapters on energy applications; and Part 3 presents 5 chapters devoted to specific theoretical and computational issues.

This volume presents a collection of contributions dedicated to applied problems in the financial and energy sectors that have been formulated and solved in a stochastic optimization framework. The invited authors represent a group of scientists and practitioners, who cooperated in recent years to facilitate the growing penetration of stochastic programming techniques in real-world applications, inducing a significant advance over a large spectrum of complex decision problems.After the recent widespread liberalization of the energy sector in Europe and the unprecedented growth of energy prices in international commodity markets, we have witnessed a significant convergence of strategic decision problems in the energy and financial sectors. This has often resulted in common open issues and has induced a remarkable effort by the industrial and scientific communities to facilitate the adoption of advanced analytical and decision tools. The main concerns of the financial community over the last decade have suddenly penetrated the energy sector inducing a remarkable scientific and practical effort to address previously unforeseeable management problems. Stochastic Optimization Methods in Finance and Energy: New Financial Products and Energy Markets Strategies aims to include in a unified framework for the first time an extensive set of contributions related to real-world applied problems in finance and energy, leading to a common methodological approach and in many cases having similar underlying economic and financial implications. Part 1 of the book presents 6 chapters related to financial applications; Part 2 presents 7 chapters on energy applications; and Part 3 presents 5 chapters devoted to specific theoretical and computational issues.

The scope of this volume is primarily to analyze from different methodological perspectives  similar valuation and optimization problems arising in financial applications, aimed at facilitating a theoretical and computational integration between methods largely regarded as alternatives. Increasingly in recent years, financial management problems such as strategic asset allocation, asset-liability management, as well as asset pricing problems, have  been presented in the literature adopting formulation and solution approaches rooted in stochastic programming, robust optimization, stochastic dynamic programming (including approximate SDP) methods, as well as policy rule optimization, heuristic approaches and others. The aim of the volume is to facilitate the comprehension of  the modeling and methodological potentials of those methods, thus their common assumptions and peculiarities, relying on similar financial problems. The volume will address different valuation problems common in finance related to: asset pricing, optimal portfolio management, risk measurement, risk control and asset-liability management.The volume features chapters of theoretical and practical relevance clarifying recent advances in the associated applied field from different standpoints, relying on similar valuation problems and, as mentioned, facilitating a mutual and beneficial methodological and theoretical knowledge transfer. The distinctive aspects of the volume can be summarized as follows:Strong benchmarking philosophy, with contributors explicitly asked to underline current limits and desirable developments in their areas.Theoretical contributions, aimed at advancing the state-of-the-art in the given domain with a clear potential for applicationsThe inclusion of an algorithmic-computational discussion of issues arising on similar valuation problems across different methods.Variety of applications: rarely is itpossible within a single volume to consider and analyze different, and possibly competing, alternative optimization techniques applied to well-identified financial valuation problems.Clear definition of the current state-of-the-art in each methodological and applied area to facilitate future research directions.

This handbook includes contributions related to optimization, pricing and valuation problems, risk modeling and decision making problems arising in global financial and commodity markets from the perspective of Operations Research and Management Science. The book is structured in three parts, emphasizing common methodological approaches arising in the areas of interest:-          Part I: Optimization techniques-          Part II: Pricing and Valuation -          Part III: Risk ModelingThe book presents to a wide community of Academics and Practitioners a selection of theoretical and applied contributions on topics that have recently attracted increasing interest in commodity and financial markets. Within a structure based on the three parts, it presents recent state-of-the-art and original works related to:-          The adoption of multi-criteria and dynamic optimization approaches in financial and insurance markets in presence of market stress and growing systemic risk;-          Decision paradigms, based on behavioral finance or factor-based, or more classical stochastic optimization techniques, applied to portfolio selection problems including new asset classes such as alternative investments;-          Risk measurement methodologies, including model risk assessment, recently applied to energy spot and future markets and new risk measures recently proposed to evaluate risk-reward trade-offs in global financial and commodity markets; and derivatives portfolio hedging and pricing methods recently put forward in the financial community in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

The scope of this volume is primarily to analyze from different methodological perspectives similar valuation and optimization problems arising in financial applications, aimed at facilitating a theoretical and computational integration between methods largely regarded as alternatives.

This handbook includes contributions related to optimization, pricing and valuation problems, risk modeling and decision making problems arising in global financial and commodity markets from the perspective of Operations Research and Management Science. The book is structured in three parts, emphasizing common methodological approaches arising in the areas of interest:-          Part I: Optimization techniques-          Part II: Pricing and Valuation -          Part III: Risk ModelingThe book presents to a wide community of Academics and Practitioners a selection of theoretical and applied contributions on topics that have recently attracted increasing interest in commodity and financial markets. Within a structure based on the three parts, it presents recent state-of-the-art and original works related to:-          The adoption of multi-criteria and dynamic optimization approaches in financial and insurance markets in presence of market stress and growing systemic risk;-          Decision paradigms, based on behavioral finance or factor-based, or more classical stochastic optimization techniques, applied to portfolio selection problems including new asset classes such as alternative investments;-          Risk measurement methodologies, including model risk assessment, recently applied to energy spot and future markets and new risk measures recently proposed to evaluate risk-reward trade-offs in global financial and commodity markets; and derivatives portfolio hedging and pricing methods recently put forward in the financial community in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.