Copulas are functions that join multivariate distribution functions to their one-dimensional margins. The study of copulas and their role in statistics is a new but vigorously growing field. In this book the student or practitioner of statistics and probability will find discussions of the fundamental properties of copulas and some of their primary applications. The applications include the study of dependence and measures of association, and the construction of families of bivariate distributions. With nearly a hundred examples and over 150 exercises, this book is suitable as a text or for self-study. The only prerequisite is an upper level undergraduate course in probability and mathematical statistics, although some familiarity with nonparametric statistics would be useful. Knowledge of measure-theoretic probability is not required. Roger B. Nelsen is Professor of Mathematics at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He is also the author of "Proofs Without Words: Exercises in Visual Thinking," published by the Mathematical Association of America.

Copulas are mathematical objects that fully capture the dependence structure among random variables and hence offer great flexibility in building multivariate stochastic models. Since their introduction in the early 50's, copulas have gained considerable popularity in several fields of applied mathematics, such as finance, insurance and reliability theory. Today, they represent a well-recognized tool for market and credit models, aggregation of risks, portfolio selection, etc. This book is divided into two main parts: Part I - "Surveys" contains 11 chapters that provide an up-to-date account of essential aspects of copula models. Part II - "Contributions" collects the extended versions of 6 talks selected from papers presented at the workshop in Warsaw.

The latest tools and techniques for pricing and risk management This book introduces readers to the use of copula functions to represent the dynamics of financial assets and risk factors, integrated temporal and cross-section applications. The first part of the book will briefly introduce the standard the theory of copula functions, before examining the link between copulas and Markov processes. It will then introduce new techniques to design Markov processes that are suited to represent the dynamics of market risk factors and their co-movement, providing techniques to both estimate and simulate such dynamics. The second part of the book will show readers how to apply these methods to the evaluation of pricing of multivariate derivative contracts in the equity and credit markets. It will then move on to explore the applications of joint temporal and cross-section aggregation to the problem of risk integration.

This book gives readers the solid and formal mathematical background to apply copulas to a range of mathematical areas, such as probability, real analysis, measure theory, and algebraic structures. The authors prove the results as simply as possible and unify various methods scattered throughout the literature in common frameworks, including shuffles of copulas. They also explore connections with related functions, such as quasi-copulas, semi-copulas, and triangular norms, that have been used in different domains.

Conditional Monte Carlo: Gradient Estimation and Optimization Applications deals with various gradient estimation techniques of perturbation analysis based on the use of conditional expectation. The primary setting is discrete-event stochastic simulation. This book presents applications to queueing and inventory, and to other diverse areas such as financial derivatives, pricing and statistical quality control. To researchers already in the area, this book offers a unified perspective and adequately summarizes the state of the art. To researchers new to the area, this book offers a more systematic and accessible means of understanding the techniques without having to scour through the immense literature and learn a new set of notation with each paper. To practitioners, this book provides a number of diverse application areas that makes the intuition accessible without having to fully commit to understanding all the theoretical niceties. In sum, the objectives of this monograph are two-fold: to bring together many of the interesting developments in perturbation analysis based on conditioning under a more unified framework, and to illustrate the diversity of applications to which these techniques can be applied. Conditional Monte Carlo: Gradient Estimation and Optimization Applications is suitable as a secondary text for graduate level courses on stochastic simulations, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

Financial engineering has been proven to be a useful tool for risk management, but using the theory in practice requires a thorough understanding of the risks and ethical standards involved. Stochastic Processes with Applications to Finance, Second Edition presents the mathematical theory of financial engineering using only basic mathematical tools

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'The book remains a valuable tool both for statisticians who are already familiar with the theory of copulas and just need to develop sampling algorithms, and for practitioners who want to learn copulas and implement the simulation techniques needed to exploit the potential of copulas in applications.'Mathematical ReviewsThe book provides the background on simulating copulas and multivariate distributions in general. It unifies the scattered literature on the simulation of various families of copulas (elliptical, Archimedean, Marshall-Olkin type, etc.) as well as on different construction principles (factor models, pair-copula construction, etc.). The book is self-contained and unified in presentation and can be used as a textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate students with a firm background in stochastics. Besides the theoretical foundation, ready-to-implement algorithms and many examples make the book a valuable tool for anyone who is applying the methodology.

This book provides the reader with a background on simulating copulas and multivariate distributions in general. It unifies the scattered literature on the simulation of various families of copulas (elliptical, Archimedean, Marshall-Olkin type, etc.) as well as on different construction principles (factor models, pair-copula construction, etc.). The book is self-contained and unified in presentation and can be used as a textbook for advanced undergraduate or graduate students with a firm background in stochastics. Alongside the theoretical foundation, ready-to-implement algorithms and many examples make this book a valuable tool for anyone who is applying the methodology.