Semi-Markov Risk Models for Finance, Insurance and Reliability - by Jacques Janssen & Raimondo Manca (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This book aims to give a complete and self-contained presentation of semi- Markov models with finitely many states, in view of solving real life problems of risk management in three main fields: Finance, Insurance and Reliability providing a useful complement to our first book (Janssen and Manca (2006)) which gives a theoretical presentation of semi-Markov theory. However, to help assure the book is self-contained, the first three chapters provide a summary of the basic tools on semi-Markov theory that the reader will need to understand our presentation. For more details, we refer the reader to our first book (Janssen and Manca (2006)) whose notations, definitions and results have been used in these four first chapters. Nowadays, the potential for theoretical models to be used on real-life problems is severely limited if there are no good computer programs to process the relevant data. We therefore systematically propose the basic algorithms so that effective numerical results can be obtained. Another important feature of this book is its presentation of both homogeneous and non-homogeneous models. It is well known that the fundamental structure of many real-life problems is n- homogeneous in time, and the application of homogeneous models to such problems gives, in the best case, only approximated results or, in the worst case, nonsense results.

From the Back Cover

This book presents applications of semi-Markov processes in finance, insurance and reliability, using real-life problems as examples. After a presentation of the main probabilistic tools necessary for understanding of the book, the authors show how to apply semi-Markov processes in finance, starting from the axiomatic definition and continuing eventually to the most advanced financial tools, particularly in insurance and in risk-and-ruin theories. Also considered are reliability problems that interact with credit risk theory in finance. The unique approach of this book is to solve finance and insurance problems with semi-Markov models in a complete way and furthermore present real-life applications of semi-Markov processes.

Audience

This book is intended for applied mathematicians, statisticians, financial intermediaries, actuaries, engineers, operations researchers.

Review Quotes

From the reviews:

"The book under review aims to give a complete and self-contained presentation of semi-Markov models with finitely many states, in view of solving real life problems of risk management in three main fields: Finance, Insurance and Reliability. ... important feature of this book is its presentation of both homogenous and non-homogenous models. This book addresses a very large public as it includes undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics and applied mathematics, in economics and business studies, actuaries, financial intermediaries, engineers and operation researchers." (Nico G. Gamkrelidze, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1144, 2008)