Saturday, January 28, 2017

Distribution of stochastic integral


Suppose that f(t) is a deterministic square integrable function. I want to show t0f(τ)dWτN(0,t0|f(τ)|2dτ).


I want to know if the following approach is correct and/or if there's a better approach.


First note that t0f(τ)dWτ=lim where \pi_{n} is a sequence of partitions of [0,t] with mesh going to zero. Then \int_{0}^{t}f(\tau)dW_{\tau} is a sum of normal random variables and hence is normal. So all we need to do is calculate the mean and variance. Firstly: \begin{eqnarray*} E(\lim_{n\to\infty}\sum_{[t_{i-1},t_{i}]\in\pi_{n}}f(t_{i-1})(W_{t_{i}}-W_{t_{i-1}})) & = & \lim_{n\to\infty}\sum_{[t_{i-1},t_{i}]\in\pi_{n}}f(t_{i-1})E(W_{t_{i}}-W_{t_{i-1}})\\ & = & \lim_{n\to\infty}\sum_{[t_{i-1},t_{i}]\in\pi_{n}}f(t_{i-1})\times0\\ & = & 0 \end{eqnarray*} due to independence of Wiener increments. Secondly: \begin{eqnarray*} var(\int_{0}^{t}f(\tau)dW_{\tau}) & = & E((\int_{0}^{t}f(\tau)dW_{\tau})^{2})\\ & = &E( \int_{0}^{t}f(\tau)^{2}d\tau)=\int_{0}^{t}f(\tau)^{2}d\tau \end{eqnarray*} by Ito isometry.




Answer



Similar question has been discussed previously; see Why does the short rate in the Hull White model follow a normal distribution?.


Basically, the probabilistic limit of normal random variables is still normal. Then, as \sum_{[t_{i-1},t_{i}]\in\pi_{n}}f(t_{i-1})(W_{t_{i}}-W_{t_{i-1}}) is normal, the limit \int_{0}^{t}f(\tau)dW_{\tau}, in probability, is also normal, with the mean and variance as you provided.


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