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Current projects

Filtering techniques in the modeling, pricing and hedging of interest rate and credit risk.
Rüdiger Frey

In this project stochastic  filtering methodology will be employed for solving pricing, hedging and calibration problems in interest rate and credit risk models. Stochastic filtering is concerned with the detection of signals from noisy observations. In interest rate and credit risk modeling, filtering problems arise naturally since important state variables such as firm values cannot be observed directly by investors.

Existing filtering results are not yet sufficient for the application to complicated problems in model calibration and derivative pricing. The mathematical contribution of this project will therefore be the generalization of  filtering results from the literature and the development of new numerical methods. On the financial side the project will contribute to a better understanding of dynamic credit risk models, including counterparty credit risk and credit contagion. Moreover, risk management techniques for derivatives such as dynamic hedging will be analyzed with the help of filtering. The practical relevance of these issues has been highlighted during the current financial crisis.


(Credit) Risk Management and Dependence Modelling
Rüdiger Frey

A major cause of concern in managing the credit risk of most financial institutions is the occurrence of disproportionately many joint defaults of different counterparties over a fixed time horizon. Joint default events also have an an important impact on the performance of derivative securities, whose payoff is linked to the loss of a whole portfolio of underlying bonds or loans such as collaterized debt obligations (CLOs) or basket credit derivatives. In fact, the occurrence of disproportionally many joint defaults is what could be termed "extreme credit risk" in these contexts. Clearly, precise mathematical models for the loss in a portfolio of dependent credit risks are needed to adequately measure and price this risk. A key research area of the financial mathematics working group in Leipzig is therefore dependence modelling in credit risk management. More specifically we consider the following issues

We are working on models with interacting defaults, i.e. models where the default of one company has a direct impact on the default probability of other companies. Here we use some ideas from the probabilistic theory of interacting particle systems. To date we have studied pricing and hedging of credit derivatives in these models; relevant papers include Frey-Backhaus (2006) and Frey-Backhaus (2007). In the future it is intended to analyse the impact of interactions between default events on the aggregate loss of large credit portfolios and the ensuing important implications for credit risk management. In the longer term, we aim at exploring the role of meta-stable states - created by interaction between economic agents - for the presence of disruptive financial phenomena such as "stock market crashes" or "credit crunches".

Rüdiger Frey has written a book on Quantitative Risk Management (together with Alexander McNeil, Herriott-Watt University Edinburgh and Paul Embrechts, ETH Zurich). Dependence modelling in finance and (credit) risk management plays a major role in this text.

Currently we are focusing on credit risk models under incomplete information; details are given below.

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Risk Management for Derivatives under Market Frictions
Rüdiger Frey

In recent years market liquidity has become an issue of high concern in risk management. In particular, risk managers realized that financial models which are based on the assumption that an investor can trade large amounts of an asset without affecting its price (perfectly liquid markets) may fail miserably in circumstances where market liquidity vanishes. This calls for additional research, extending traditional financial models to markets which are not perfectly liquid. In this project we focus on the risk management for derivative securities via dynamic hedging and study models of an illiquid market where the implementation of a dynamic hedging strategy has an impact on the price process of the underlying asset. From a mathematical viewpoint this lead to interesting nonlinear versions of the parabolic Black-Scholes pricing PDE. Currently we are focusing on qualitative properties of option prices in illiquid markets; an overview of this research can be found in the following slides.

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