This book is an introduction to Malliavin calculus as a generalization of the classical non-anticipating Ito calculus to an anticipating setting. It presents the development of the theory and its use in new fields of application.

This volume contains refereed research or review papers presented at the 5th Seminar on Stochastic Processes, Random Fields and Applications, which took place at the Centro Stefano Franscini (Monte Verità) in Ascona, Switzerland, from May 29 to June 3, 2004. The seminar focused mainly on stochastic partial differential equations, stochastic models in mathematical physics, and financial engineering.

This book contains articles on stochastic processes (stochastic calculus and Malliavin calculus, functionals of Brownian motions and Levy processes, stochastic control and optimization problems, stochastic numerics, and so on) and their applications to problems in mathematical finance. Examples of topics are applications of Malliavin calculus and numerical analysis to a new simulation scheme for calculating the price of financial derivatives, applications of the asymptotic expansion method in Malliavin calculus to financial problems, semimartingale decompositions under an enlargement of filtrations in connection with insider problems, and the problem of transaction costs in connection with stochastic control and optimization problems.

This book contains 17 articles on stochastic processes (stochastic calculus and Malliavin calculus, functionals of Brownian motions and Lévy processes, stochastic control and optimization problems, stochastic numerics, and so on) and their applications to problems in mathematical finance.The proceedings have been selected for coverage in:• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings® (ISTP® / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings® (ISSHP® / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings (ISSHP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)• CC Proceedings — Engineering & Physical Sciences

This book contains 17 articles on stochastic processes (stochastic calculus and Malliavin calculus, functionals of Brownian motions and L(r)vy processes, stochastic control and optimization problems, stochastic numerics, and so on) and their applications to problems in mathematical finance.The proceedings have been selected for coverage in: OCo Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings- (ISTP- / ISI Proceedings)OCo Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)OCo Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings- (ISSHP- / ISI Proceedings)OCo Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings (ISSHP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)OCo CC Proceedings OCo Engineering & Physical Sciences"

Stochastic analysis has a variety of applications to biological systems as well as physical and engineering problems, and its applications to finance and insurance have bloomed exponentially in recent times. The goal of this book is to present a broad overview of the range of applications of stochastic analysis and some of its recent theoretical developments. This includes numerical simulation, error analysis, parameter estimation, as well as control and robustness properties for stochastic equations. The book also covers the areas of backward stochastic differential equations via the (non-linear) G-Brownian motion and the case of jump processes. Concerning the applications to finance, many of the articles deal with the valuation and hedging of credit risk in various forms, and include recent results on markets with transaction costs.

This book provides the reader with the principal concepts and results related to differential properties of measures on infinite dimensional spaces. In the finite dimensional case such properties are described in terms of densities of measures with respect to Lebesgue measure. In the infinite dimensional case new phenomena arise. For the first time a detailed account is given of the theory of differentiable measures, initiated by S. V. Fomin in the 1960s; since then the method has found many various important applications. Differentiable properties are described for diverse concrete classes of measures arising in applications, for example, Gaussian, convex, stable, Gibbsian, and for distributions of random processes. Sobolev classes for measures on finite and infinite dimensional spaces are discussed in detail. Finally, we present the main ideas and results of the Malliavin calculus--a powerful method to study smoothness properties of the distributions of nonlinear functionals on infinite dimensional spaces with measures. The target readership includes mathematicians and physicists whose research is related to measures on infinite dimensional spaces, distributions of random processes, and differential equations in infinite dimensional spaces. The book includes an extensive bibliography on the subject.