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************************** Special Date ********************************

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                                                         Seminar
             Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management
                                  The Chinese University of Hong Kong

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Title

:

A Model for Reversible Investment Capacity Expansion

 

 

 

Speaker

:

Prof. Mihail Zervos

 

 

Department of Mathematics

 

 

London School of Economics

 

 

 

Date

:

May 17th, 2007 (Thursday)

 

 

 

Time

:

4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

 

 

 

Venue

:

Room 513

 

 

William M.W. Mong Engineering Building

 

 

(Engineering Building Complex Phase 2)

 

 

CUHK

 

 

 

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Abstract:
 

We consider the problem of determining the optimal investment level that a firm should maintain in the presence of random price and/or demand fluctuations. We model market uncertainty by means of a geometric Brownian motion, and we consider general running payoff functions. Our model allows for capacity expansion as well as for capacity reduction, with each of these actions being associated with proportional costs. The resulting optimisation problem takes the form of a singular stochastic control problem that we solve explicitly. We illustrate our results by means of the so-called Cobb-Douglas production function. The problem that we study presents a model, the associated Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation of which admits a classical solution that conforms with the underlying economic intuition but does not necessarily identify with the corresponding value function, which may be identically equal to $\infty$. Thus, our model provides a situation that highlights the need for rigorous mathematical analysis when addressing stochastic optimisation applications in finance and economics, as well as in other fields.


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Biography:
 

Mihail Zervos graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens in 1990. He received his MSc degree in control systems and his PhD degree in stochastic control and optimisation in 1991 and 1995, respectively, from Imperial College London. During the years 1995-2000, he was a lecturer in the Department of Statistics at the University of Newcastle. During the years 2000-2006, he was a lecturer and a reader in the Department of Mathematics at King's College London.  He is currently Professor of financial mathematics in the Department of Mathematics at the London School of Economics.


************************* ALL ARE WELCOME ************************

 

 

 

Host

:

Prof. Xun Yu Zhou

Tel

:

(852) 2609-8320

Email

:

xyzhou@se.cuhk.edu.hk

 

 

 

Enquiries

:

Bolin Ding or Jeffrey Xu Yu

 

:

Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management

 

 

CUHK

Website

:

http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/~seg5810

Email

:

seg5810@se.cuhk.edu.hk

 

 

 

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