Walter Schachermayer

Proof of the "Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing" in its general form by Delbaen and Schachermayer was a milestone in the history of modern mathematical finance and now forms the cornerstone of this book. Puts into book format a series of major results due mostly to the authors of this book. Embeds highest-level research results into a treatment amenable to graduate students, with introductory, explanatory background. Awaited in the quantitative finance community.

Proof of the "Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing" in its general form by Delbaen and Schachermayer was a milestone in the history of modern mathematical finance and now forms the cornerstone of this book. Puts into book format a series of major results due mostly to the authors of this book. Embeds highest-level research results into a treatment amenable to graduate students, with introductory, explanatory background. Awaited in the quantitative finance community.

This volume includes the five lecture courses given at the CIME-EMS School on "Stochastic Methods in Finance" held in Bressanone/Brixen, Italy 2003. It deals with innovative methods, mainly from stochastic analysis, that play a fundamental role in the mathematical modelling of finance and insurance: the theory of stochastic processes, optimal and stochastic control, stochastic differential equations, convex analysis and duality theory. Five topics are treated in detail: Utility maximization in incomplete markets; the theory of nonlinear expectations and its relationship with the theory of risk measures in a dynamic setting; credit risk modelling; the interplay between finance and insurance; incomplete information in the context of economic equilibrium and insider trading.

In World Mathematical Year 2000 the traditional St. Flour Summer School was hosted jointly with the European Mathematical Society. Sergio Albeverio reviews the theory of Dirichlet forms, and gives applications including partial differential equations, stochastic dynamics of quantum systems, quantum fields and the geometry of loop spaces. The second text, by Walter Schachermayer, is an introduction to the basic concepts of mathematical finance, including the Bachelier and Black-Scholes models. The fundamental theorem of asset pricing is discussed in detail. Finally Michel Talagrand, gives an overview of the mean field models for spin glasses. This text is a major contribution towards the proof of certain results from physics, and includes a discussion of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick and the p-spin interaction models.