Rama Cont

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Rama Cont
Rama Cont Oberwolfach 2012.jpg
Cont at Oberwolfach in 2012
Born
Rama Cont

(1972-06-30) 30 June 1972 (age 52)
NationalityFlag of Iran.svg  Iran
Alma mater École Polytechnique
Known for Systemic risk modelling, Functional Ito calculus, Pathwise Ito calculus, Model risk, Liquidity at risk
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Thesis Des marches aléatoires aux marchés aléatoires. Modélisation statistique des marchés financiers: études empiriques et approches théoriques. [4]  (1998)
Doctoral advisor Jean-Philippe Bouchaud [5]
Website people.maths.ox.ac.uk/rama.cont/

Rama Cont is the Statutory Professor of Mathematical Finance at the University of Oxford. [6] [7] He is known for contributions to probability theory, stochastic analysis and mathematical modelling in finance, in particular mathematical models of systemic risk. [3] He was awarded the Louis Bachelier Prize by the French Academy of Sciences in 2010.

Contents

Biography

Born in Tehran (Iran), Cont obtained his undergraduate degree from Ecole Polytechnique (France), [7] a master's degree in theoretical physics from Ecole Normale Superieure and a degree in Chinese Language from Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales. [8] His doctoral thesis focused on the application of Lévy processes in financial modelling.

Career and achievements

Cont started his career as a CNRS researcher in applied mathematics at Ecole Polytechnique (France) in 1998 and held academic positions at Ecole Polytechnique, Columbia University and Imperial College London. [8] He was appointed 'Directeur de Recherche CNRS' (CNRS Senior Research Scientist) in 2008 and was chair of mathematical finance at Imperial College London [9] from 2012 to 2018. He was elected Statutory Professor in Mathematical Finance at the Oxford Mathematical Institute and professorial fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford in 2018. [10] [11]

Cont's research focuses on probability theory, stochastic analysis and mathematical modelling in finance. [12] His mathematical work focuses on pathwise methods in stochastic analysis [13] and the Functional Ito calculus. [14]

In quantitative finance he is known in particular for his work on models based on jump processes, [15] the stochastic modelling of limit order books as queueing systems [16] , [17] machine learning methods in finance [18] and the mathematical modelling of systemic risk. [19] [20] He was editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of Quantitative Finance. [21]

Cont has served as advisor to central banks and international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements on stress testing and systemic risk monitoring. His work on network models, financial stability and central clearing [22] has influenced central banks and regulators . [23] He has given numerous media interviews [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] on issues related to systemic risk and financial regulation.

Scientific contributions

Causal functional calculus

Cont is known in mathematics for his the "Causal functional calculus", a calculus for non-anticipative, or "causal", functionals on the space of paths. [29] Cont and collaborators built on the seminal work of German mathematician Hans Föllmer [30] and Bruno Dupire to construct a calculus for non-anticipative functionals, [31] which includes as a special case the so-called Ito-Föllmer calculus, a pathwise counterpart of Ito's stochastic calculus. [32] Subsequent work by Cont and Nicolas Perkowski [33] extended the Ito-Föllmer calculus to functions and functionals of more general irregular paths with non-zero p-th order variation.

Systemic risk modeling

Work by Cont and his collaborators on mathematical modeling of systemic risk and financial stability, in particular on network models of financial contagion and the modeling of indirect contagion via 'fire sales', has influenced academic research and policy in this area. [23] [34]

Central clearing

Cont's research on central clearing in over-the-counter (OTC) markets has influenced risk management practices of central counterparties and regulatory thinking on central clearing. [35] Cont has argued that central clearing does not eliminate counterparty risk but transforms it into liquidity risk, therefore risk management and stress testing of central counterparties should focus on liquidity risk and liquidity resources, not capital. [36]

Risk measurement and Model risk

Cont introduced a rigorous approach for the assessment of model risk [37] which has been influential in the design of model risk management frameworks in financial institutions. [38] [39]

Cont, Deguest and Scandolo [40] introduced the concept of 'risk measurement procedure', an empirical counterpart of the notion of risk measure, and defined a robust class of risk measurement procedures known as 'Range Value-at-risk' (RVaR), a robust alternative to Expected shortfall. [41]

Cont, Kotlicki and Valderrama define the concept of Liquidity at risk, [42] as the amount of liquid assets needed by a financial institution to face liquidity outflows in this scenario.

Awards and honours

Cont was awarded the Louis Bachelier Prize by the French Academy of Sciences in 2010 for his work on mathematical modelling of financial markets. [1] He was elected Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 2017 for "contributions to stochastic analysis and mathematical finance". [3] He received the Award for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Research (APEX) from the Royal Society in 2017 for his research on mathematical modelling of systemic risk. [2] [43]

Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stochastic process</span> Collection of random variables

In probability theory and related fields, a stochastic or random process is a mathematical object usually defined as a family of random variables in a probability space, where the index of the family often has the interpretation of time. Stochastic processes are widely used as mathematical models of systems and phenomena that appear to vary in a random manner. Examples include the growth of a bacterial population, an electrical current fluctuating due to thermal noise, or the movement of a gas molecule. Stochastic processes have applications in many disciplines such as biology, chemistry, ecology, neuroscience, physics, image processing, signal processing, control theory, information theory, computer science, and telecommunications. Furthermore, seemingly random changes in financial markets have motivated the extensive use of stochastic processes in finance.

Stochastic calculus is a branch of mathematics that operates on stochastic processes. It allows a consistent theory of integration to be defined for integrals of stochastic processes with respect to stochastic processes. This field was created and started by the Japanese mathematician Kiyosi Itô during World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Lévy (mathematician)</span> French mathematician

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In finance, systemic risk is the risk of collapse of an entire financial system or entire market, as opposed to the risk associated with any one individual entity, group or component of a system, that can be contained therein without harming the entire system. It can be defined as "financial system instability, potentially catastrophic, caused or exacerbated by idiosyncratic events or conditions in financial intermediaries". It refers to the risks imposed by interlinkages and interdependencies in a system or market, where the failure of a single entity or cluster of entities can cause a cascading failure, which could potentially bankrupt or bring down the entire system or market. It is also sometimes erroneously referred to as "systematic risk".

Liquidity risk is a financial risk that for a certain period of time a given financial asset, security or commodity cannot be traded quickly enough in the market without impacting the market price.

A stochastic differential equation (SDE) is a differential equation in which one or more of the terms is a stochastic process, resulting in a solution which is also a stochastic process. SDEs have many applications throughout pure mathematics and are used to model various behaviours of stochastic models such as stock prices, random growth models or physical systems that are subjected to thermal fluctuations.

In finance, the Heston model, named after Steven L. Heston, is a mathematical model that describes the evolution of the volatility of an underlying asset. It is a stochastic volatility model: such a model assumes that the volatility of the asset is not constant, nor even deterministic, but follows a random process.

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Bruno Dupire is a researcher and lecturer in quantitative finance. He is currently Head of Quantitative Research at Bloomberg LP. He is best known for his contributions to local volatility modeling and Functional Itô Calculus. He is also an Instructor at New York University since 2005, in the Courant Master of Science Program in Mathematics in Finance.

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In financial mathematics, the entropic risk measure is a risk measure which depends on the risk aversion of the user through the exponential utility function. It is a possible alternative to other risk measures as value-at-risk or expected shortfall.

Quantitative analysis is the use of mathematical and statistical methods in finance and investment management. Those working in the field are quantitative analysts (quants). Quants tend to specialize in specific areas which may include derivative structuring or pricing, risk management, investment management and other related finance occupations. The occupation is similar to those in industrial mathematics in other industries. The process usually consists of searching vast databases for patterns, such as correlations among liquid assets or price-movement patterns.

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References

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  2. 1 2 "APEX Awards | Royal Society". 2 October 2024.
  3. 1 2 3 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. "SIAM Fellows: Class of 2017". SIAM. Retrieved 5 August 2018.
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  10. "Appointments". Oxford Gazette. Oxford University. 2018. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
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  14. Bally, Vlad; Caramellino, Lucia; Cont, Rama (2016). Stochastic Integration by Parts and Functional Itô Calculus. Advanced Courses in Mathematics - CRM Barcelona. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-27128-6. ISBN   978-3-319-27127-9.
  15. Cont, Rama; Tankov, Peter (2004). Financial Modelling with Jump Processes. CRC Press. ISBN   9781584884132.
  16. Cont, Rama; De Larrard, Adrien (2013). "Price Dynamics in a Markovian Limit Order Market". SIAM Journal on Financial Mathematics. 4 (1): 1–25. arXiv: 1104.4596 . doi:10.1137/110856605. S2CID   1238587.
  17. Cont, Rama; Stoikov, Sasha; Talreja, Rishi (2008). "A Stochastic Model for Order Book Dynamics". Operations Research. 58 (7176): 340–344. doi:10.1287/opre.1090.0780.
  18. Mannix, Rob (2018). "Neural network learns 'universal model' for stock-price moves". RISK.
  19. Systemic Risk: a challenge for Mathematical Modelling on YouTube
  20. Cont, Rama; Moussa, Amal; Santos, Edson Bastos (2013). "Network structure and systemic risk in banking systems". In Fouque, Jean-Pierre; Langsam, Joseph (eds.). Handbook of Systemic Risk (PDF). Cambridge University Press. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.637.587 . doi:10.1017/CBO9781139151184.018. ISBN   9781107023437. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 Aug 2013. Retrieved 5 August 2018. Alt URL
  21. Cont, Rama (2010). Encyclopedia of Quantitative Finance. Chichester: Wiley. ISBN   9780470057568.
  22. "Rama Cont - Central bank research hub". BIS. Retrieved 5 August 2018.
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  25. ISDA AGM 2018: Rama Cont - Imperial College London. YouTube . Archived from the original on 2021-12-09.
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  27. Sorman, Guy. "Wild Randomness". Forbes (August 2009). Retrieved 5 August 2018.
  28. "Les chambres de compensation transforment le risque de contrepartie en risque de liquidité". 27 February 2017.
  29. Chiu, Henry; Cont, Rama (2022), "Causal Functional Calculus", Transactions of the London Mathematical Society, 9 (1): 237–269, doi: 10.1112/tlm3.12050 , hdl: 10044/1/99908 , S2CID   16318176
  30. Föllmer, Hans (1981), "Calcul d'Ito sans probabilités.", Séminaire de probabilités de Strasbourg, 15, Springer, retrieved 2023-12-09
  31. Cont, Rama; Fournie, David-Antoine (2010). "Change of variable formulas for non-anticipative functional on path space". Journal of Functional Analysis. 259 (4): 1043–1072. doi: 10.1016/j.jfa.2010.04.017 . hdl: 10044/1/10539 .
  32. Ananova, Anna; Cont, Rama (2017), "Pathwise integration with respect to paths of finite quadratic variation", Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées, 107 (6): 737–757, arXiv: 1603.03305 , doi: 10.1016/j.matpur.2016.10.004 , S2CID   16318176
  33. Cont, Rama; Perkowski, Nicolas (2020), "Pathwise integration and change of variable formulas for continuous paths with arbitrary regularity", Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, 6 (5): 161-186, arXiv: 1803.09269 , doi: 10.1090/btran/34
  34. [John Fell, Francesco Mazzaferro, Richard Portes, Eric Schaanning (2020) Fallen angels and indirect contagion: Rationale for and lessons from a system-wide analysis, 11 September 2020 https://voxeu.org/article/fallen-angels-and-indirect-contagion]
  35. Cont, Rama (2015), "The end of the waterfall: default resources of central counterparties", Journal of Risk Management in Financial Institutions, 8 (4), Henry Stewart Publications: 365, doi:10.69554/JZQP9267, hdl: 11250/2495799 , SSRN   2588986 , retrieved 2020-12-09
  36. Cont, Rama (2017), "Central clearing and risk transformation", Financial Stability Review, 21, Banque de France, SSRN   2919260 , retrieved 2020-12-09
  37. Morini, Massimo (2012). Understanding and Managing Model Risk: A Practical Guide for Quants, Traders and Validators. Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781118467312. ISBN   9781118467312.
  38. "Model risk". 17 September 2017.
  39. Cont, Rama; Deguest, Romain; Giacomo, Giacomo (2010). "Robustness and Sensitivity Analysis of Risk Measurement Procedures" (PDF). Quantitative Finance. 10 (6): 593–606. doi:10.1080/14697681003685597. S2CID   158678050.
  40. Fissler, Tobias; Ziegel, Johanna F. (2021). "On the elicitability of range value at risk". Statistics & Risk Modeling. 38 (1–2): 25–46. arXiv: 1902.04489 . doi:10.1515/strm-2020-0037. S2CID   85517050.
  41. Cont, Rama; Kotlicki, Artur; Valderrama, Laura (2020). "Liquidity at Risk: Joint Stress Testing of Solvency and Liquidity". Journal of Banking and Finance. 118: 105871. doi: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2020.105871 . hdl: 11250/2652653 .
  42. Dunning, Hayley (3 November 2017). "Maths researcher awarded funding for interdisciplinary risk project". Imperial College London. Retrieved 5 August 2018.