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Motivated by the study of the propagation of convexity by semi-groups of stochastic differential equations and convex comparison between the distributions of solutions of two such equations, we study the comparison for the convex order between a Gaussian distribution and a Gaussian mixture. We give and discuss intrinsic necessary and sufficient conditions for convex ordering. On the examples that we have worked out, the two conditions appear to be closely related.

We design a fully implementable scheme to compute the invariant distribution of ergodic McKean-Vlasov SDE satisfying a uniform confluence property. Under natural conditions, we prove various convergence results notably we obtain rates for the Wasserstein distance in quadratic mean and almost sure sense.

We investigate propagation of convexity and convex ordering on a typical stochastic optimal control problem, namely the pricing of \q{\emph{Take-or-Pay}} swing option, a financial derivative product commonly traded on energy markets. The dynamics of the underlying asset is modelled by an \emph{ARCH} model with convex coefficients. We prove that the value function associated to the stochastic optimal control problem is a convex function of the underlying asset price. We also introduce a domination criterion offering insights into the monotonicity of the value function with respect to parameters of the underlying \emph{ARCH} coefficients. We particularly focus on the one-dimensional setting where, by means of Stein's formula and regularization techniques, we show that the convexity assumption for the \emph{ARCH} coefficients can be relaxed with a semi-convexity assumption. To validate the results presented in this paper, we also conduct numerical illustrations., Comment: 32 Pages

We investigate the properties of the solutions of scaled Volterra equations (i.e. with an affine mean-reverting drift) in terms of stationarity at both a finite horizon and on the long run. In particular we prove that such an equation never has a stationary regime, except if the kernel is constant (i.e. the equation is a standard Brownian diffusion) or in some fully degenerate pathological settings. We introduce a deterministic stabilizer $ \varsigma$ associated to the kernel which produces a {\em fake stationary regime} in the sense that all the marginals share the same expectation and variance. We also show that the marginals of such a process starting from when starting various initial values are confluent in $L^2$ as time goes to infinity. We establish that for some classes of diffusion coefficients (square root of positive quadratic polynomials) the time shifted solutions of such Volterra equations weakly functionally converges toward a family of $L^2$-stationary processes sharing the same covariance function. We apply these results to (stabilized) rough volatility models (when the kernel $K(t)= t^{H-\frac 12}$, $0

In this paper, we are interested in the propagation of convexity by the strong solution to a one-dimensional Brownian stochastic differential equation with coefficients Lipschitz in the spatial variable uniformly in the time variable and in the convex ordering between the solutions of two such equations. We prove that while these properties hold without further assumptions for convex functions of the processes at one instant only, an assumption almost amounting to spatial convexity of the diffusion coefficient is needed for the extension to convex functions at two instants. Under this spatial convexity of the diffusion coefficients, the two properties even hold for convex functionals of the whole path. For directionally convex functionals, the spatial convexity of the diffusion coefficient is no longer needed. Our method of proof consists in first establishing the results for time discretization schemes of Euler type and then transferring them to their limiting Brownian diffusions. We thus exhibit approximations which avoid {\em convexity arbitrages} by preserving convexity propagation and comparison and can be computed by Monte Carlo simulation.

Cr\'epey, Frikha, and Louzi (2023) introduced a nested stochastic approximation algorithm and its multilevel acceleration to compute the value-at-risk and expected shortfall of a random financial loss. We hereby establish central limit theorems for the renormalized estimation errors associated with both algorithms as well as their averaged versions. Our findings are substantiated through a numerical example., Comment: 56 pages, 1 figure, 3 tables

We propose a new algorithm for variance reduction when estimating $f(X_T)$ where $X$ is the solution to some stochastic differential equation and $f$ is a test function. The new estimator is $(f(X^1_T) + f(X^2_T))/2$, where $X^1$ and $X^2$ have same marginal law as $X$ but are pathwise correlated so that to reduce the variance. The optimal correlation function $\rho$ is approximated by a deep neural network and is calibrated along the trajectories of $(X^1, X^2)$ by policy gradient and reinforcement learning techniques. Finding an optimal coupling given marginal laws has links with maximum optimal transport., Comment: 7 pages

We propose two parametric approaches to evaluate swing contracts with firm constraints. Our objective is to define approximations for the optimal control, which represents the amounts of energy purchased throughout the contract. The first approach involves approximating the optimal control by means of an explicit parametric function, where the parameters are determined using stochastic gradient descent based algorithms. The second approach builds on the first one, where we replace parameters in the first approach by the output of a neural network. Our numerical experiments demonstrate that by using Langevin based algorithms, both parameterizations provide, in a short computation time, better prices compared to state-of-the-art methods., Comment: 30 pages

We propose a new theoretical framework that exploits convolution kernels to transform a Volterra path-dependent (non-Markovian) stochastic process into a standard (Markovian) diffusion process. This transformation is achieved by embedding a Markovian "memory process" within the dynamics of the non-Markovian process. We discuss existence and path-wise regularity of solutions for the stochastic Volterra equations introduced and we provide a financial application to volatility modeling. We also propose a numerical scheme for simulating the processes. The numerical scheme exhibits a strong convergence rate of 1/2, which is independent of the roughness parameter of the volatility process. This is a significant improvement compared to Euler schemes used in similar models. We propose a new theoretical framework that exploits convolution kernels to transform a Volterra path-dependent (non-Markovian) stochastic process into a standard (Markovian) diffusion process. This transformation is achieved by embedding a Markovian "memory process" (the goldfish) within the dynamics of the non-Markovian process (the elephant). Most notably, it is also possible to go back, i.e., the transformation is reversible. We discuss existence and path-wise regularity of solutions for the stochastic Volterra equations introduced and we propose a numerical scheme for simulating the processes, which exhibits a remarkable convergence rate of $1/2$. In particular, in the fractional kernel case, the strong convergence rate is independent of the roughness parameter, which is a positive novelty in contrast with what happens in the available Euler schemes in the literature in rough volatility models.

Stochastic Gradient Descent Langevin Dynamics (SGLD) algorithms, which add noise to the classic gradient descent, are known to improve the training of neural networks in some cases where the neural network is very deep. In this paper we study the possibilities of training acceleration for the numerical resolution of stochastic control problems through gradient descent, where the control is parametrized by a neural network. If the control is applied at many discretization times then solving the stochastic control problem reduces to minimizing the loss of a very deep neural network. We numerically show that Langevin algorithms improve the training on various stochastic control problems like hedging and resource management, and for different choices of gradient descent methods., Comment: 12 pages

In this paper, we are interested in comparing solutions to stochastic Volterra equations for the convex order on the space of continuous $\R^d$-valued paths and for the monotonic convex order when $d=1$. Even if in general these solutions are neither semi-martingales nor Markov processes, we are able to exhibit conditions on their coefficients enabling the comparison. Our approach consists in first comparing their Euler schemes and then taking the limit as the time step vanishes. We consider two types of Euler schemes depending on the way the Volterra kernels are discretized. The conditions ensuring the comparison are slightly weaker for the first scheme than for the second one and this is the other way round for convergence. Moreover, we extend the integrability needed on the starting values in the existence and convergence results in the literature to be able to only assume finite first order moments, which is the natural framework for convex ordering.

We study the convergence of Langevin-Simulated Annealing type algorithms with multiplicative noise, i.e. for $V : \mathbb{R}^d \to \mathbb{R}$ a potential function to minimize, we consider the stochastic differential equation $dY_t = - \sigma \sigma^\top \nabla V(Y_t) dt + a(t)\sigma(Y_t)dW_t + a(t)^2\Upsilon(Y_t)dt$, where $(W_t)$ is a Brownian motion, where $\sigma : \mathbb{R}^d \to \mathcal{M}_d(\mathbb{R})$ is an adaptive (multiplicative) noise, where $a : \mathbb{R}^+ \to \mathbb{R}^+$ is a function decreasing to $0$ and where $\Upsilon$ is a correction term. Allowing $\sigma$ to depend on the position brings faster convergence in comparison with the classical Langevin equation $dY_t = -\nabla V(Y_t)dt + \sigma dW_t$. In a previous paper we established the convergence in $L^1$-Wasserstein distance of $Y_t$ and of its associated Euler scheme $\bar{Y}_t$ to $\text{argmin}(V)$ with the classical schedule $a(t) = A\log^{-1/2}(t)$. In the present paper we prove the convergence in total variation distance. The total variation case appears more demanding to deal with and requires regularization lemmas., Comment: 18 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2109.11669

We give bounds for the total variation distance between the solutions to two stochastic differential equations starting at the same point and with close coefficients, which applies in particular to the distance between an exact solution and its Euler-Maruyama scheme in small time. We show that for small $t$, the total variation distance is of order $t^{r/(2r+1)}$ if the noise coefficient $\sigma$ of the SDE is elliptic and $\mathcal{C}^{2r}_b$, $r\in \mathbb{N}$ and if the drift is $C^1$ with bounded derivatives, using multi-step Richardson-Romberg extrapolation. We do not require the drift to be bounded. Then we prove with a counterexample that we cannot achieve a bound better than $t^{1/2}$ in general., Comment: 20 pages

We study the convergence of Langevin-Simulated Annealing type algorithms with multiplicative noise, i.e. for $V : \mathbb{R}^d \to \mathbb{R}$ a potential function to minimize, we consider the stochastic equation $dY_t = - \sigma \sigma^\top \nabla V(Y_t) dt + a(t)\sigma(Y_t)dW_t + a(t)^2\Upsilon(Y_t)dt$, where $(W_t)$ is a Brownian motion, where $\sigma : \mathbb{R}^d \to \mathcal{M}_d(\mathbb{R})$ is an adaptive (multiplicative) noise, where $a : \mathbb{R}^+ \to \mathbb{R}^+$ is a function decreasing to $0$ and where $\Upsilon$ is a correction term. This setting can be applied to optimization problems arising in Machine Learning. The case where $\sigma$ is a constant matrix has been extensively studied however little attention has been paid to the general case. We prove the convergence for the $L^1$-Wasserstein distance of $Y_t$ and of the associated Euler-scheme $\bar{Y}_t$ to some measure $\nu^\star$ which is supported by $\text{argmin}(V)$ and give rates of convergence to the instantaneous Gibbs measure $\nu_{a(t)}$ of density $\propto \exp(-2V(x)/a(t)^2)$. To do so, we first consider the case where $a$ is a piecewise constant function. We find again the classical schedule $a(t) = A\log^{-1/2}(t)$. We then prove the convergence for the general case by giving bounds for the Wasserstein distance to the stepwise constant case using ergodicity properties., Comment: 31 pages + Supplementary Material (6 pages)

Fishing quotas are unpleasant but efficient to control the productivity of a fishing site. A popular model has a stochastic differential equation for the biomass on which a stochastic dynamic programming or a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman algorithm can be used to find the stochastic control -- the fishing quota. We compare the solutions obtained by dynamic programming against those obtained with a neural network which preserves the Markov property of the solution. The method is extended to a similar multi species model to check its robustness in high dimension.

We propose a novel approach in the assessment of a random risk variable $X$ by introducing magnitude-propensity risk measures $(m_X,p_X)$. This bivariate measure intends to account for the dual aspect of risk, where the magnitudes $x$ of $X$ tell how hign are the losses incurred, whereas the probabilities $P(X=x)$ reveal how often one has to expect to suffer such losses. The basic idea is to simultaneously quantify both the severity $m_X$ and the propensity $p_X$ of the real-valued risk $X$. This is to be contrasted with traditional univariate risk measures, like VaR or Expected shortfall, which typically conflate both effects. In its simplest form, $(m_X,p_X)$ is obtained by mass transportation in Wasserstein metric of the law $P^X$ of $X$ to a two-points $\{0, m_X\}$ discrete distribution with mass $p_X$ at $m_X$. The approach can also be formulated as a constrained optimal quantization problem. This allows for an informative comparison of risks on both the magnitude and propensity scales. Several examples illustrate the proposed approach.

We establish upper bounds for the $L^p$-quantization error, p in (1, 2+d), induced by the recursive Markovian quantization of a d-dimensional diffusion discretized via the Euler scheme. We introduce a hybrid recursive quantization scheme, easier to implement in the high-dimensional framework, and establish upper bounds to the corresponding $L^p$-quantization error. To take advantage of these extensions, we propose a time discretization scheme and a recursive quantization-based discretization scheme associated to a reflected Backward Stochastic Differential Equation and estimate $L^p$-error bounds induced by the space approximation. We will explain how to numerically compute the solution of the reflected BSDE relying on the recursive quantization and compare it to other types of quantization., Comment: 40 pages, 1 figure, 3 tables

In this paper, we establish the monotone convex order between two $\mathbb{R}$-valued McKean-Vlasov processes $X=(X_t)_{t\in [0, T]}$ and $Y=(Y_t)_{t\in [0, T]}$ defined on a filtered probability space $(\Omega, \mathcal{F}, (\mathcal{F}_{t})_{t\geq0}, \mathbb{P})$ by \begin{align} &dX_{t}=b(t, X_{t}, \mu_{t})dt+\sigma(t, X_{t}, \mu_{t})dB_{t}, \quad X_{0}\in L^{p}(\mathbb{P})\; \text{with}\; p\geq 2,\nonumber\\ &dY_{t}=\beta(t, Y_{t}, \nu_{t})dt+\theta(t, \,Y_{t}, \nu_{t})\,dB_{t}, \,\quad Y_{0}\in L^{p}(\mathbb{P}), \nonumber \end{align} where $\forall\, t\in [0, T],\: \mu_{t}=\mathbb{P}\circ X_{t}^{-1}, \:\nu_{t}=\mathbb{P}\circ Y_{t}^{-1}. $ If we make the convexity and monotony assumption (only) on $b$ and $|\sigma|$ and if $b\leq \beta$ and $|\sigma|\leq |\theta|$, then the monotone convex order for the initial random variable $X_0\preceq_{\,\text{mcv}} Y_0$ can be propagated to the whole path of processes $X$ and $Y$. That is, if we consider a non-decreasing convex functional $F$ defined on the path space with polynomial growth, we have $\mathbb{E}\, F(X)\leq \mathbb{E}\, F(Y)$; for a non-decreasing convex functional $G$ defined on the product space involving the path space and its marginal distribution space, we have $\mathbb{E}\, G(X, (\mu_{t})_{t\in [0, T]})\leq \mathbb{E}\, G(Y, (\nu_{t})_{t\in [0, T]})$ under appropriate conditions. The symmetric setting is also valid, that is, if $Y_0\preceq_{\,\text{mcv}} X_0$ and $|\theta|\leq |\sigma|$, then $\mathbb{E}\, F(Y)\leq \mathbb{E}\, F(X)$ and $\mathbb{E}\, G(Y, (\nu_{t})_{t\in [0, T]})\leq \mathbb{E}\, G(X, (\mu_{t})_{t\in [0, T]})$. The proof is based on several forward and backward dynamic programming principle and the convergence of the truncated Euler scheme of the McKean-Vlasov equation.

In this paper, we focus on non-asymptotic bounds related to the Euler scheme of an ergodic diffusion with a possibly multiplicative diffusion term (non-constant diffusion coefficient). More precisely, the objective of this paper is to control the distance of the standard Euler scheme with decreasing step ({usually called Unadjusted Langevin Algorithm in the Monte Carlo literature}) to the invariant distribution of such an ergodic diffusion. In an appropriate Lyapunov setting and under {uniform} ellipticity assumptions on the diffusion coefficient, we establish (or improve) such bounds for Total Variation and $L^1$-Wasserstein distances in both multiplicative and additive and frameworks. These bounds rely on weak error expansions using {Stochastic Analysis} adapted to decreasing step setting.

Quantization provides a very natural way to preserve the convex order when approximating two ordered probability measures by two finitely supported ones. Indeed, when the convex order dominating original probability measure is compactly supported, it is smaller than any of its dual quantizations while the dominated original measure is greater than any of its stationary (and therefore any of its optimal) quadratic primal quantization. Moreover, the quantization errors then correspond to martingale couplings between each original probability measure and its quantization. This permits to prove that any martingale coupling between the original probability measures can be approximated by a martingale coupling between their quantizations in Wassertein distance with a rate given by the quantization errors but also in the much finer adapted Wassertein distance. As a consequence, while the stability of (Weak) Martingale Optimal Transport problems with respect to the marginal distributions has only been established in dimension $1$ so far, their value function computed numerically for the quantized marginals converges in any dimension to the value for the original probability measures as the numbers of quantization points go to $\infty$., Comment: 25 pages

We establish for dual quantization the counterpart of Kieffer's uniqueness result for compactly supported one dimensional probability distributions having a $\log$-concave density (also called strongly unimodal): for such distributions, $L^r$-optimal dual quantizers are unique at each level $N$, the optimal grid being the unique critical point of the quantization error. An example of non-strongly unimodal distribution for which uniqueness of critical points fails is exhibited. In the quadratic $r=2$ case, we propose an algorithm to compute the unique optimal dual quantizer. It provides a counterpart of Lloyd's method~I algorithm in a Voronoi framework. Finally semi-closed forms of $L^r$-optimal dual quantizers are established for power distributions on compacts intervals and truncated exponential distributions.

We establish the functional convex order results for two scaled McKean-Vlasov processes $X=(X_{t})_{t\in[0, T]}$ and $Y=(Y_{t})_{t\in[0, T]}$ defined on a filtered probability space $(\Omega, \mathcal{F}, (\mathcal{F}_{t})_{t\geq0}, \mathbb{P})$ by \[\begin{cases} dX_{t}= b(t, X_{t}, \mu_{t})dt+\sigma(t, X_{t}, \mu_{t})dB_{t}, \;\;X_{0}\in L^{p}(\mathbb{P}),\\ dY_{t}\,= b(t, \,Y_{t}\,,\, \nu_{t})dt+\theta(t, \,Y_{t}\,,\, \nu_{t})dB_{t}, \;\;Y_{0}\in L^{p}(\mathbb{P}), \end{cases}\] where $p\geq2$, for every $ t\in[0, T]$, $\mu_t$, $\nu_t$ denote the probability distribution of $X_t$, $Y_t$ respectively and the drift coefficient $b(t, x, \mu)$ is affine in $x$ (scaled). If we make the convexity and monotony assumption (only) on $\sigma$ and if $\sigma\preceq\theta$ with respect to the partial matrix order, the convex order for the initial random variable $X_0 \preceq_{\,cv} Y_0$ can be propagated to the whole path of process $X$ and $Y$. That is, if we consider a convex functional $F$ defined on the path space with polynomial growth, we have $\mathbb{E}F(X)\leq\mathbb{E}F(Y)$; for a convex functional $G$ defined on the product space involving the path space and its marginal distribution space, we have $\mathbb{E}\,G\big(X, (\mu_t)_{t\in[0, T]}\big)\leq \mathbb{E}\,G\big(Y, (\nu_t)_{t\in[0, T]}\big)$ under appropriate conditions. The symmetric setting is also valid, that is, if $\theta \preceq \sigma$ and $Y_0 \leq X_0$ with respect to the convex order, then $\mathbb{E}\,F(Y) \leq \mathbb{E}\,F(X)$ and $\mathbb{E}\,G\big(Y, (\nu_t)_{t\in[0, T]}\big)\leq \mathbb{E}\,G(X, (\mu_t)_{t\in[0, T]})$. The proof is based on several forward and backward dynamic programming principles and the convergence of the Euler scheme of the McKean-Vlasov equation.

We extend some rate of convergence results of greedy quantization sequences already investigated in arXiv:1409.0732 [math.PR]. We show, for a more general class of distributions satisfying a certain control, that the quantization error of these sequences have an $n^{-\frac1d}$ rate of convergence and that the distortion mismatch property is satisfied. We will give some non-asymptotic Pierce type estimates. The recursive character of greedy vector quantization allows some improvements to the algorithm of computation of these sequences and the implementation of a recursive formula to quantization-based numerical integration. Furthermore, we establish further properties of sub-optimality of greedy quantization sequences., Comment: 28 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables

A major drawback of the Standard Heston model is that its implied volatility surface does not produce a steep enough smile when looking at short maturities. For that reason, we introduce the Stationary Heston model where we replace the deterministic initial condition of the volatility by its invariant measure and show, based on calibrated parameters, that this model produce a steeper smile for short maturities than the Standard Heston model. We also present numerical solution based on Product Recursive Quantization for the evaluation of exotic options (Bermudan and Barrier options).

This paper proposes two numerical solution based on Product Optimal Quantization for the pricing of Foreign Echange (FX) linked long term Bermudan options e.g. Bermudan Power Reverse Dual Currency options, where we take into account stochastic domestic and foreign interest rates on top of stochastic FX rate, hence we consider a 3-factor model. For these two numerical methods, we give an estimation of the $L^2$-error induced by such approximations and we illustrate them with market-based examples that highlight the speed of such methods.

We are interested in proposing approximations of a sequence of probability measures in the convex order by finitely supported probability measures still in the convex order. We propose to alternate transitions according to a martingale Markov kernel mapping a probability measure in the sequence to the next and dual quantization steps. In the case of ARCH models and in particular of the Euler scheme of a driftless Brownian diffusion, the noise has to be truncated to enable the dual quantization step. We analyze the error between the original ARCH model and its approximation with truncated noise and exhibit conditions under which the latter is dominated by the former in the convex order at the level of sample-paths. Last, we analyse the error of the scheme combining the dual quantization steps with truncation of the noise according to primal quantization.

We propose new weak error bounds and expansion in dimension one for optimal quantization-based cubature formula for different classes of functions, such that piecewise affine functions, Lipschitz convex functions or differentiable function with piecewise-defined locally Lipschitz or $\alpha$-H\"older derivatives. This new results rest on the local behaviors of optimal quantizers, the $L^r$-$L^s$ distribution mismatch problem and Zador's Theorem. This new expansion supports the definition of a Richardson-Romberg extrapolation yielding a better rate of convergence for the cubature formula. An extension of this expansion is then proposed in higher dimension for the first time. We then propose a novel variance reduction method for Monte Carlo estimators, based on one dimensional optimal quantizers.