A reprint of one of the classic volumes on portfolio theory and investment, this book has been used by the leading professors at universities such as Stanford, Berkeley, and Carnegie-Mellon. It contains five parts, each with a review of the literature and about 150 pages of computational and review exercises and further in-depth, challenging problems.
Frequently referenced and highly usable, the material remains as fresh and relevant for a portfolio theory course as ever.
Sample Chapter(s)
Chapter 1: Expected Utility Theory (373 KB)
Contents:
- Mathematical Tools:
- Expected Utility Theory
- Convexity and the Kuhn-Tucker Conditions
- Dynamic Programming
- Qualitative Economic Results:
- Stochastic Dominance
- Measures of Risk Aversion
- Separation Theorems
- Static Portfolio Selection Models:
- Mean-Variance and Safety First Approaches and Their Extensions
- Existence and Diversification of Optimal Portfolio Policies: Effects of Taxes on Risk Taking
- Dynamic Models Reducible to Static Models:
- Models That Have a Single Decision Point
- Risk Aversion over Time Implies Static Risk Aversion
- Myopic Portfolio Policies
- Dynamic Models:
- Two-Period Consumption Models and Portfolio Revision
- Models of Optimal Capital Accumulation and Portfolio Selection
- Models of Option Strategy
- The Capital Growth Criterion and Continuous-Time Models
Readership: Postdoctoral and graduate students, researchers, academics, and professionals interested in portfolio theory and stochastic optimization.
“Ziemba and Vickson's Stochastic Optimization Models in Finance remains to this day a timeless collection of articles by prominent scholars including Dreze, Fama, Merton, Modigliani, Samuelson, Stiglitz and Wilson. The second edition makes this classic collection accessible under one cover. I strongly recommend it to the serious student of financial economics.”
George M Constantinides
Leo Melamed Professor of Finance
Graduate School of Business, The University of Chicago
“It took thirty years for the time of this book to come. But come it did — and students of the numerous contemporary treatments of portfolio models do well to acquaint themselves with the wealth of information that Ziemba and Vickson amassed in this comprehensive volume. This publication does not simply have the potential of becoming a classic — it is already one.”
Stavros A Zenios
University of Cyprus and The Wharton Financial Institutions Center
“It is a testament to the foresight of the editors that much of current research in financial economics can be traced back to the papers and mind expanding exercises contained in this book. In fact, so many hidden gems remain unexploited that this handbook will almost surely also contain the foundations for many future classics.”
Jean-Pierre Zigrand
Department of Accounting and Finance and Financial Markets Group
The London School of Economics
“… the most valuable aspects of the book are substantial, rigorous, thought-provoking exercises which have the potential to push the reader toward relevant and engaging research … For anyone interested in and serious about the topic, Stochastic Optimization Models in Finance provides a marvelous reference source and survey of seminal work, and a wonderful collection of exercises which could engage the mind almost indefinitely.”
The Journal of Risk and Insurance
William T Ziemba is the Alumni Professor of Financial Modeling and Stochastic Optimization, Emeritus in the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia where he taught from 1968 to 2004. He now teaches as a visiting professor.
He has been a visiting professor at Cambridge, Oxford, London School of Economics, and Warwick in the UK; Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley, Chicago and MIT in the US; Bergamo and Venice in Italy; Tsukuba in Japan and the National University of Singapore. Leading financial institutions which he has been consultant to include the Frank Russell Company, Morgan Stanley, Buchanan Partners and Gordon Capital. His research is in asset-liability management, portfolio theory and practice, security market imperfections, Japanese and Asian financial markets, sports and lottery investments and applied stochastic programming.
Raymond G Vickson has been a faculty member in Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo since 1973. He did research on topics such as storage management, optimization models and queueing. Born in Vancouver and educated at the University of British Columbia, with a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he has retired to Victoria as an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo.
