Risks, Values and Prices in Finance, Lecture Notes by S. Zhang,
(will be made available for lectures below).
Investment Science, by D.G.
Luenberger, Oxford University Press (recommended only)
General information
The course aims to familiarize students with basic operations research
tools used in modern finance. The emphasis is on optimization models.
The student
intending to take the course should have a background in optimization
at the level
of IE303 and in engineering economics concepts. There will be homework
assignments
requiring use of XPRESS-MP optimization package.
Topics
1. Cash flow
streams, present value, fixed-income instruments
2. Linear
programming models in finance: cash flow matching and dedication:
sections 2.1 and 2.2
of Nielsen's notes.
3. Fundamental
theorem of asset pricing (chapter
2 of Zhang)
4. Risk-neutral
pricing and arbitrage detection in single period models, pricing
options (chapter
4 of Zhang)
5. Arbitrage in
multiperiod investments: stochastic linear programming and binomial
trees (based on a paper
by A.J.King)
6. Introduction
to quadratic programming
7. Mean-Variance
Markowitz portfolio optimization
(based on notes
by Zhang, and a review paper
by M. Steinbach)
8. Multiperiod
and other extensions of Markowitz portfolio optimization (based on M.
Steinbach)
9. Integer
programming in finance: constructing an index fund (from G.
Cornuéjols' notes)
10. Risk measures in
finance and their minimization: VaR and CVaR (based on
Cornuéjols and Tűtűncű)
11. Credit risky bonds
and optimization (based on the paper
by Bertsimas and Pachamanova)
12. Robust
portfolio selection (based on the paper
by Bertsimas and Sim, and section 4 of the
paper
by Ben-Tal and Nemirovski)
Homeworks
The first homework is assigned here. The second homework is assigned here.