Abstract
We propose an approach to compute the boundary crossing probabilities for a class of diffusion processes which can be expressed as piecewise monotone (not necessarily one-to-one) functionals of a standard Brownian motion. This class includes many interesting processes in real applications, e.g., Ornstein–Uhlenbeck, growth processes and geometric Brownian motion with time dependent drift. This method applies to both one-sided and two-sided general nonlinear boundaries, which may be discontinuous. Using this approach explicit formulas for boundary crossing probabilities for certain nonlinear boundaries are obtained, which are useful in evaluation and comparison of various computational algorithms. Moreover, numerical computation can be easily done by Monte Carlo integration and the approximation errors for general boundaries are automatically calculated. Some numerical examples are presented.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
T. W. Anderson,“A modification of the sequential probability ratio test to reduce the sample size,” Annals of Mathematical Statistics vol. 31 pp. 165–197, 1960.
W. Bischoff, E. Hashorva, J. Hüsler, and F. Miller,“Exact asymptotics for boundary crossings of the Brownian brisge with trend with application to the Kolmogorov test,” Annals of the Institute of Statististical Mathematics vol. 55, pp. 849–864, 2003.
F. Black, and M. Scholes,“The pricing of options and corporate liabilities,” Journal of Political Economy vol.81, pp. 637–659, 1973.
G. Bluman, “In the transformation of diffusion processes into the Wiener process,” SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics vol. 39, pp. 238–247, 1980.
K. Borovkov and A. Novikov,“Explicit bounds for approaximation rates of boundary crossing probabilities for the Wiener process,” Journal of Applied Probability vol. 42, pp. 82–92, 2005.
I. D. Cherkasov,“On the transformation of the diffusion process to a Wiener process,” Theory of Probability and Its Applications vol. 2, pp. 373–377, 1957.
J. C. Cox, J. E. Ingersoll, and S. A. Ross, “A theory of the term structure of interest rates,” Econometrica vol. 53, pp. 385–407, 1985.
H. E. Daniels, “The minimum of stationary Markov process superimposed on a U-shaped trend,” Journal of Applied Probability vol.6, pp. 399–408, 1969.
H. E. Daniels, “Approximating the first crossing-time density for a curved boundary,” Bernoulli vol. 2, pp. 133–143, 1996.
J. L. Doob, “Heuristic approach to the Kolmogorov–Smirnov theorems,” Annals of Mathematical Statistics vol. 20, pp. 393–403, 1949.
J. Dupuis, and D. Siegmund,“ Boundary crossing probabilities in linkage analysis,” Game theory, optimal stopping, probability and statistics, pp. 141–152, IMS Lecture Notes Monogr. Ser., 35, Inst. Math. Statist., Beachwood, Ohio, 2000.
J. Durbin,“Boundary crossing probabilities for the Brownian motion and the poisson processes and techniques for computing the power of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test,” Journal of Applied Probability vol. 8, pp. 431–453, 1971.
J. Durbin,“The first-passage density of the Brownian motion process to a curved boundary,” Journal of Applied Probability vol. 29, pp. 291–304, 1992.
N. Ebrahimi,“System reliability bsed on diffusion models for fatigue crack frowth,” Naval Research Logistics vol. 52, pp. 46–57, 2005.
B. Ferebee,“The tangent approximation to one-sided Brownian exit densities,” Zeitschrift fur Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie und Verwandte Gebiete vol. 61, pp. 309–326, 1982.
B. Ferebee, “An asymptotic expansion for one-sided Brownian exit densities,” Zeitschrift fur Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie und Verwandte Gebiete vol. 63, pp. 1–15, 1983.
J. Garrido,“Stochastic differential equations for compounded risk reserves.,” Insurance. Mathematics & Economics vol. 8, pp. 165–173, 1989.
V. Giorno, A. G. Nobile, L. M. Ricciardi, and S. Sato,“ On the evaluation of first-passage-time probability densities via non-singular integral equations,” Advances in Applied Probability vol. 21, pp. 20–36, 1989.
M. T. Giraudo, and L. Sacerdote,“An improved technique for the simulation of first passage times for diffusion processes,” Communications in Statistics. Simulation and Computation vol. 28, pp. 1135–1163, 1999.
M. T. Giraudo, L. Sacerdote, and C. Zucca,“A Monte Carlo method for the simulation of first passage times of diffusion processes,” Methodology and Computing in Applied Probability vol. 3, pp. 215–231, 2001.
I. Karatzas, and S. E. Shreve, Brownian Motion and Stochastic Calculus, 2nd edn., Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, 1991.
P. E. Kloeden and E. Platen, The Numerical Solution to Stochastic Differential Equations, Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, 1992.
S. G. Kou, and H. Wang,“First passage times of a jump diffusion process,” Advances in Applied Probability vol. 35, pp. 504–531, 2003.
A. Kolmogorov,“Über die analytischen methoden in der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung,” Mathematische Annalen vol. 104, pp. 415–458, 1931.
W. Krämer, W. Ploberger, and R. Alt, “Testing for structural change in dynamic models,” Econometrica vol. 56, pp. 1355–1369, 1988.
D. Lamberton, and B. Lapeyre, Introduction to Stochastic Calculus Applied to Finance, Chapman & Hall, London, UK, 1996.
H. R. Lerche, Boundary Crossing of Brownian Motion, In Lecture Notes in Statistics vol. 40. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, 1986.
X. S. Lin,“Double barrier hitting time distributions with applications to exotic options,” Insurance. Mathematics & Economics vol. 23, pp. 45–58, 1998.
A. Martin-Löf,“The final size of a nearly critical epidemic, and the first passage time of a Wiener process to a parabolic barrier,” Journal of Applied Probability vol. 35, pp. 671–682, 1998.
R. C. Merton,“Theory of rational option pricing,” Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science vol. 4, pp. 141–183, 1973.
A. J. Michael,“Viscoelasticity, postseismic slip, fault interactions, and the recurrence of large earthquakes,” Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America vol. 95, pp. 1594–1603, 2005.
A. Novikov, V. Frishling, and N. Kordzakhia,“Approximations of boundary crossing probabilities for a Brownian motion,” Journal of Applied Probability vol. 99, pp. 1019–1030, 1999.
A. Novikov, V. Frishling, and N. Kordzakhia, “Time-dependent barrier options and boundary crossing probabilities,” Georgian Mathematical Journal vol. 10, pp. 325–334, 2003.
K. Pötzelberger, and L. Wang,“Boundary crossing probability for Brownian Motion,” Journal of Applied Probability vol. 38, pp. 152-164, 2001.
L. M. Ricciardi,“On the transformation of diffusion processes into the Wiener process,” Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications vol. 54, pp. 185-199, 1976.
L. M. Ricciardi, A. Di Crescenzo, V. Giorno, and A.G. Nobile,“An outline of theoretical and algorithmic approaches to first passage time problems with applications to biological modeling.,”Mathematica Japonica vol. 50, pp. 247–322, 1999.
L. M. Ricciardi, L. Sacerdote, and S. Sato,“On an integral equation for first-passage-time probability densities,” Journal of Applied Probility vol. 21, pp. 302-314, 1984.
G. O. Roberts, and C. F. Shortland,“Pricing barrier options with time-dependent coefficients,” Mathematical Finance vol. 7, pp. 83–93, 1997.
L. Sacerdote, and F. Tomassetti, “On evaluations and asymptotic approximations of first-passage-time probabilities,” Advanced of Applied Probability vol. 28, pp. 270–284, 1996.
P. K. Sen, Sequential Nonparametrics: Invariance Principles and Statistical Inference, Wiley, New York, 1981.
D. Siegmund,“Boundary crossing probabilities and statistical applications,” Annals of Statistics vol. 14, pp. 361–404, 1986.
A. N. Startsev,“Asymptotic analysis of the general stochastic epidemic with variable infectious periods,” Journal of Applied Probility vol. 38, pp. 18–35, 2001.
V. Strassen,“Almost sure behaviour of sums of independent random variables and martingales,” In L. M. Le Cam and J. Neyman (eds.),Proc. 5th Berkley Symp. Math. Statist. Prob., Vol. 11, Contributions to Probability Theory, pp. 315–343, Part 1, University of California Press, Berkley, California, 1967.
H. C. Tuckwell, and F. Y. M. Wan,“First passage time to detection in stochastic population dynamical models for HIV-1,” Applied Mathematics Letters vol. 13, pp. 79–83, 2000.
O. A. Vasicek,“An equilibrium characterization of the term structure,” Journal of Financial Economics vol. 5, pp. 177–188, 1977.
L. Wang, and K. Pötzelberger,“Boundary crossing probability for Brownian Motion and general boundaries,” Journal of Applied Probability vol. 34, pp. 54–65, 1997.
T. Yamada, and S. Watanabe,“On the uniqueness of the solutions of stochastic differential equations,” Journal of Mathematics of Kyoto University vol. 11, pp. 155–167, 1971.
A. Zeileis,“Alternative boundaries for CUSUM tests,” Statistical Papers vol. 45, pp. 123–131, 2004.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wang, L., Pötzelberger, K. Crossing Probabilities for Diffusion Processes with Piecewise Continuous Boundaries. Methodol Comput Appl Probab 9, 21–40 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11009-006-9002-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11009-006-9002-6
Keywords
- Boundary crossing probabilities
- Brownian motion
- Diffusion process
- First hitting time
- First passage time
- Wiener process