In this essay, we share how a small, independent, academic open access (OA) press, punctum books, has survived and can maybe thrive financially, but also in terms of human quality of life dividends, in the very precarious landscape of making and funding open books. Tracing the history of the press and our bumpy road to better financial…[Read more]

Núñez-Muley abstract

The Edict of 1567, or Anti-Morisco Edict, was promulgated by Spanish King Philip II on January 1, after being approved in Madrid on November 17, 1566. Its purpose was to eliminate specific Morisco customs, such as their language, dress, and dances. Núñez Muley’s Petition is an attempt to persuade Christian authorities to de…[Read more]

This article presents a model for pricing complex CDO structures and compute the sensitivities of the risk factors. The complex CDO structures need to be priced using the market information on tranche losses at multiple points of time. Currently, the model is being used for the valuation of forward starting CDO trades (FSCDO) and loss-trigger…[Read more]

The structure of a Binary Return Note is similar to the one of a regular note, but the coupons are
contingent on return rates on stocks. Quasi-Monte Carlo simulation is used for pricing the product.

We present a pricing model for fade option. A fade option can be more precisely named as “point-barrier option”. The fade option is a vanilla option that exists or dies if a barrier is breached on a single preset date, which is prior or equal to the contract maturity.

This publication is part of the project “Ricontrans – Visual Culture, Piety and Propaganda. Transfer and Reception of Russian Religious Art in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean (16th to Early 20th Century)”, funded from the European Research Council (erc) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant…[Read more]

Average rate or Asian options have a payoff function proportional to an average rate or price. The average price is calculated over a sampling of specified dates that need not be equally spaced in time. The average price or rate tends to be less volatile than a single underlying price and hence, an option on the underlying average price should be…[Read more]

The incidence of diseases in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) shaped encounters between colonial officials and indigenous people, yet this subject has merited minimum attention in the Ghanaian historiography. This paper examines the colonial healthcare interventions to combat the outbreak of cerebrospinal meningitis (CSM) in Asante and
how the presence…[Read more]

This study highlights the transitions that indigenous medicine and indigenous medical practices have undergone in Asante. It uses a qualitative approach anchored on both primary and secondary sources. The primary data sources include interviews and documentary data derived from reports in historical archives. Anchored on rational choice contingent…[Read more]

The article discusses valuation models for the following products: power financial indices swap contracts (PWR-SWAP), power financial transmission rights contracts (PWRSWAP- FTR), power physical delivery contracts (PWR-PHYS) and power physical transmission contracts (PWR-TR-SPREAD). All products have similar valuation structure – index swap (or s…[Read more]

This conversation revolves around Dora Apel’s work in the field of art and memory. Memory, in its mediating force, is critical for our understanding of the present and the construction of a future, or, rather, as Dora Apel posits it in her recent book Calling Memory Into Place: “Memory effects are not about the past. How do they shape the pre…[Read more]

We offer a hybrid (trinomial tree plus semi-analytic formulas) pricing method for FX Double Window Double Barrier option . Currently, the model uses spot implied volatility for the first time window, and forward implied volatility for the second time window. These are Black-Scholes implied volatilities from traded vanilla European options, but,…[Read more]

The purpose of the model is to calculate the credit spread sensitivity, correlation sensitivity, and default sensitivity via analytic methods for index CDO trades and bespoke CDO trades. The credit spread sensitivity is defined as the change in the MTM by perturbing the credit spread by a small amount; the default sensitivity is calculated by…[Read more]

A pricing model for capped-accumulated-return-call (CARC) with volatility surface is presented. Proprietary approaches to interpreting volatility surface are employed during pricing. To accelerate the convergence when low discrepancy sequences are used in Monte Carlo simulation (Quasi-Monte Carlo simulation), the Brownian Bridge Path…[Read more]

The model serves the purpose of computing basis adjustments for credit spread curves of the constituent obligors of the indexes such that the market price of the index can be repriced exactly. These adjusted index constituent curves are then used to compute index base correlations and mapped base correlations for bespoke trades, price the standard…[Read more]

The payoff of reverse convertible product involves returns on multiple assets and is conditional on hitting of continuous barriers. The Monte Carlo methodology employed by ESP is an efficient conditioning technique.

Accounting requires the ability to forecast conduit administration fees. a simple stationary lognormal model for the fees is presented. Initially, the stationarity of the sweep fees is tested by measuring the level of mean reversion. Using a Dickey-Fuller statistical test the conduits are checked for approximate stationarity. Next, assuming the…[Read more]

The article presents a model for pricing digital-type barrier options on baskets of equity stocks. Within each payment period, there is a series of basket observation times. If at each observation time we observe that all basket constituent stocks remain between their lower and upper barriers, we receive a fixed coupon amount on the payment date…[Read more]

We present a model for pricing an exotic swap where one party receives a fixed amount and makes a series of variable payments at the end of each pre-defined calculation period. The variable payments can be modeled as Asian put option payoffs on the weighted sum of two respective commodity basket levels. Furthermore, each basket level consists of a…[Read more]

A model is present for pricing an Equity Asian Swap. One leg of the swap pays the return from a monthly average of the S&P TSE60 index less a constant strike. The payment from the other leg is similarly defined for a stock. The payments are tied to notional amounts that are specified according to two pre-determined monthly schedules. Most of the…[Read more]