In this note, we examine the so-called “natural hedging” approach for life insurers to internally manage their longevity risk exposure by adjusting their insurance portfolio. In particular, unlike the existing literature, we also consider a non-parametric mortality forecasting model that averts the assumption that all mortality rates are driven by the same factor(s). Our primary finding is that...

We consider the performance of the delta hedging strategy obtained from a local volatility model when using as input the physical prices instead of the model price process. This hedging strategy is called robust if it yields a superhedge as soon as the local volatility model overestimates the market volatility. We show that robustness holds for a standard Black–Scholes model whenever we hedge a...

Standard operating policy and hedging policies are commonly used for reservoir operation for municipal or irrigation water supply. Application of these policies to hydropower reservoir operation is complex. In this paper, new standard operating policies and standard hedging policy are proposed for hydropower reservoir operation. The newly proposed policies were applied to the operation of Indir...

We develop multi-period dynamic models for fixed-income portfolio management under uncertainty, using multi-stage stochastic programming with recourse. The models integrate the prescriptive stochastic programs with descriptive Monte Carlo simulation models of the term structure of interest rates. Extensive validation experiments are carried out to establish the effectiveness of the models in he...

We study a manufacturing firm that builds a product to stock to meet a random demand. Production time is deterministic, so that if there is a backlog, customers are quoted a firm lead time that is proportional to the backlog. In order to represent the customers’ response to waiting, we introduce a new defection function — the probability that a customer chooses not to order as a function of the...

This paper develops a bivariate Markov Switching FIGARCH (MS-FIGARCH) process with constant and time varying transition probabilities as a way of modeling spot futures dynamics. An application of the model illustrates that the S&P500 and its futures exhibit long memory in volatility and structural breaks that are driven by changes in the cost of carry. The model with constant transition probabi...

This paper characterizes optimal currency hedging in several models of downside risk. We consider, in turn, three models of hedging: (i) a firm that chooses its hedging policy in the presence of bankruptcy costs; (ii) an all equity firm that faces a convex tax schedule; and (iii) a firm whose manager is subject to loss aversion. In all these models, and contrary to conventional wisdom, we show ...

Macrohedging is a hedging technique commonly used in practice. It allows one to find a hedging policy that offsets several underlying risk factors of a portfolio of assets as a whole. Here, we develop a macrohedging methodology in a general semimartingale market. We calculate the optimal macrohedge that achieves minimum risk, in a quadratic-variation sense, given a set of possible hedging instr...

This paper proposes a swarm intelligence long-term hedging tool to support electricity producers in competitive electricity markets. This tool investigates the long-term hedging opportunities available to electric power producers through the use of contracts with physical (spot and forward) and financial (options) settlement. To find the optimal portfolio the producer risk preference is stated ...