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In this paper we study time-inhomogeneous affine processes beyond the common assumption of stochastic continuity. In this setting times of jumps can be both inaccessible and predictable. To this end we develop a general theory of finite dimensional affine semimartingales under very weak assumptions. We show that the corresponding semimartingale characteristics have affine form and that the conditional characteristic function can be represented with solutions to measure differential equations of Riccati type. We prove existence of affine Markov processes and affine semimartingales under mild conditions and elaborate on examples and applications including affine processes in discrete time.

We introduce the concept of no-arbitrage in a credit risk market under ambiguity considering an intensity-based framework. We assume the default intensity is not exactly known but lies between an upper and lower bound. By means of the Girsanov theorem, we start from the reference measure where the intensity is equal to $1$ and construct the set of equivalent martingale measures. From this viewpoint, the credit risky case turns out to be similar to the case of drift uncertainty in the $G$-expectation framework. Finally, we derive the interval of no-arbitrage prices for general bond prices in a Markovian setting., Comment: 14 pages, corrected typos

The strong interaction of light with metallic nanoparticles enables field confinement well below the diffraction limit. Plasmonic waveguides consisting of metal nanoparticle chains could be used for the propagation of energy or information on the nanoscale, but high losses have thus far impeded practical applications. Here we demonstrate that efficient waveguiding is possible through gold nanoparticle chains despite the high dissipative losses of gold. A DNA origami directed self-assembly of monocrystalline, spherical nanoparticles allows the interparticle spacing to be decreased to 2 nm or below, which gives rise to lower-energy plasmon resonance modes. Our simulations imply that these lower energy modes allow efficient waveguiding but collapse if interparticle gap sizes are increased. Individual waveguides are characterized with nanometer-resolution by electron energy loss spectroscopy, and directed propagation of energy towards a fluorescent nanodiamond and nanoscale energy conversion is shown by cathodoluminescence imaging spectroscopy on a single-device level. With this approach, micrometer-long propagation lengths might be achieved, enabling applications in information technology, sensing and quantum optics.

Shot-Noise processes constitute a useful tool in various areas, in particular in finance. They allow to model abrupt changes in a more flexible way than processes with jumps and hence are an ideal tool for modelling stock prices, credit portfolio risk, systemic risk, or electricity markets. Here we consider a general formulation of shot-noise processes, in particular time-inhomogeneous shot-noise processes. This flexible class allows to obtain the Fourier transforms in explicit form and is highly tractable. We prove that Markovianity is equivalent to exponential decay of the noise function. Moreover, we study the relation to semimartingales and equivalent measure changes which are essential for the financial application. In particular we derive a drift condition which guarantees absence of arbitrage. Examples include the minimal martingale measure and the Esscher measure.

We consider the problem of modelling the term structure of defaultable bonds, under minimal assumptions on the default time. In particular, we do not assume the existence of a default intensity and we therefore allow for the possibility of default at predictable times. It turns out that this requires the introduction of an additional term in the forward rate approach by Heath, Jarrow and Morton (1992). This term is driven by a random measure encoding information about those times where default can happen with positive probability. In this framework, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for a reference probability measure to be a local martingale measure for the large financial market of credit risky bonds, also considering general recovery schemes., Comment: minor changes, 31 pages. To appear in Stochastic Processes and their Applications

The estimation of risk measures recently gained a lot of attention, partly because of the backtesting issues of expected shortfall related to elicitability. In this work we shed a new and fundamental light on optimal estimation procedures of risk measures in terms of bias. We show that once the parameters of a model need to be estimated, one has to take additional care when estimating risks. The typical plug-in approach, for example, introduces a bias which leads to a systematic underestimation of risk. In this regard, we introduce a novel notion of unbiasedness to the estimation of risk which is motivated by economic principles. In general, the proposed concept does not coincide with the well-known statistical notion of unbiasedness. We show that an appropriate bias correction is available for many well-known estimators. In particular, we consider value-at-risk and expected shortfall (tail value-at-risk). In the special case of normal distributions, closed-formed solutions for unbiased estimators can be obtained. We present a number of motivating examples which show the outperformance of unbiased estimators in many circumstances. The unbiasedness has a direct impact on backtesting and therefore adds a further viewpoint to established statistical properties.

The intensity of a default time is obtained by assuming that the default indicator process has an absolutely continuous compensator. Here we drop the assumption of absolute continuity with respect to the Lebesgue measure and only assume that the compensator is absolutely continuous with respect to a general $\sigma$-finite measure. This allows for example to incorporate the Merton-model in the generalized intensity based framework. An extension of the Black-Cox model is also considered. We propose a class of generalized Merton models and study absence of arbitrage by a suitable modification of the forward rate approach of Heath-Jarrow-Morton (1992). Finally, we study affine term structure models which fit in this class. They exhibit stochastic discontinuities in contrast to the affine models previously studied in the literature., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1411.4851