Paper 1, Section II, 26K26 K

Stochastic Financial Models | Part II, 2015

(i) What does it mean to say that (Xn,Fn)n0\left(X_{n}, \mathcal{F}_{n}\right)_{n \geqslant 0} is a martingale?

(ii) If YY is an integrable random variable and Yn=E[YFn]Y_{n}=E\left[Y \mid \mathcal{F}_{n}\right], prove that (Yn,Fn)\left(Y_{n}, \mathcal{F}_{n}\right) is a martingale. [Standard facts about conditional expectation may be used without proof provided they are clearly stated.] When is it the case that the limit limnYn\lim _{n \rightarrow \infty} Y_{n} exists almost surely?

(iii) An urn contains initially one red ball and one blue ball. A ball is drawn at random and then returned to the urn with a new ball of the other colour. This process is repeated, adding one ball at each stage to the urn. If the number of red balls after nn draws and replacements is XnX_{n}, and the number of blue balls is YnY_{n}, show that Mn=h(Xn,Yn)M_{n}=h\left(X_{n}, Y_{n}\right) is a martingale, where

h(x,y)=(xy)(x+y1)h(x, y)=(x-y)(x+y-1)

Does this martingale converge almost surely?

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