Conditional Value-at-Risk: Theory and Applications

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This thesis presents the Conditional Value-at-Risk concept and combines an analysis that covers its application as a risk measure and as a vector norm. For both areas of application the theory is revised in detail and examples are given to show how to apply the concept in practice. In the first part, CVaR as a risk measure is introduced and the analysis covers the mathematical definition of CVaR and different methods to calculate it. Then, CVaR optimization is analysed in the context of portfolio selection and how to apply CVaR optimization for hedging a portfolio consisting of options. The original contributions in this part are an alternative proof of Acerbi's Integral Formula in the continuous case and an explicit programme formulation for portfolio hedging. The second part first analyses the Scaled and Non-Scaled CVaR norm as new family of norms in Rⁿ and compares this new norm family to the more widely known Lₚ norms. Then, model (or signal) recovery problems are discussed and it is described how appropriate norms can be used to recover a signal with less observations than the dimension of the signal. The last chapter of this dissertation then shows how the Non-Scaled CVaR norm can be used in this model recovery context. The original contributions in this part are an alternative proof of the equivalence of two different characterizations of the Scaled CVaR norm, a new proposition that the Scaled CVaR norm is piecewise convex, and the entire chapter:RecoveryᵤsingCVaR. Since the CVaR norm is a rather novel concept, its applications in a model recovery context have not been researched yet. Therefore, the final chapter of this thesis might lay the basis for further research in this area.