Sunday, November 20, 2016

Inconsistent Definition of Arbitrage in Bjork?


In Tomas Bjork's Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time (or here), $\exists$ what seems to be 2 inconsistent definitions of arbitrage:


The first definition is for the single period Binomial model enter image description here



The second definition is for the multi period Binomial model enter image description here


The second suggests that there is a possibility of the portfolio value ending up zero while the first does not...


...Why?


Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention: My prof uses the latter definition to replace the first definition for the one-period. E said something about different conditions or something. (I'll ask about it during next consultation hours.)



Answer



My initial answer was incorrect, I was thinking to quickly (or slowly!?)


I agree with you that these two definitions are not consistent. The first definition is much more strict since it does not allow for any outcome $\omega \in \Omega = \{\omega_1, \omega_2\}$ such that $V_1^h(\omega)=0$. We only have 2 outcomes since we are considering the single period Binomial model.


As a side note, here are three equivalent definitions of an arbitrage portfolio $h$ (same notation as in Björk).



  1. $V_h^0 = 0$, $V_h^1 \geq 0$, and $\ E[V_h^1]>0.$


  2. $V_h^0 = 0$, $P(V_h^1 \geq 0)=1$, and $\ P(V_h^1 > 0)>0.$

  3. $V_h^0 = 0$, $V_h^1 \geq 0$, and $\ V_h^1 \neq 0$


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