Raymond G Vickson has been a faculty member in Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo since 1973. He did research on topics such as storage management, optimization models and queueing. Born in Vancouver and educated at the University of British Columbia, with a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he has retired to Victoria as an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo.

A reprint of one of the classic volumes on portfolio theory and investment, this book has been used by the leading professors at universities such as Stanford, Berkeley, and Carnegie-Mellon. It contains five parts, each with a review of the literature and about 150 pages of computational and review exercises and further in-depth, challenging problems.

Frequently referenced and highly usable, the material remains as fresh and relevant for a portfolio theory course as ever.

Contents:

• Mathematical Tools:
• Expected Utility Theory
• Convexity and the Kuhn-Tucker Conditions
• Dynamic Programming
• Qualitative Economic Results:
• Stochastic Dominance
• Measures of Risk Aversion
• Separation Theorems
• Static Portfolio Selection Models:
• Mean-Variance and Safety First Approaches and Their Extensions
• Existence and Diversification of Optimal Portfolio Policies: Effects of Taxes on Risk Taking
• Dynamic Models Reducible to Static Models:
• Models That Have a Single Decision Point
• Risk Aversion over Time Implies Static Risk Aversion
• Myopic Portfolio Policies
• Dynamic Models:
• Two-Period Consumption Models and Portfolio Revision
• Models of Optimal Capital Accumulation and Portfolio Selection
• Models of Option Strategy
• The Capital Growth Criterion and Continuous-Time Models

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Readership: Postdoctoral and graduate students, researchers, academics, and professionals interested in portfolio theory and stochastic optimization.

"Ziemba and Vickson's Stochastic Optimization Models in Finance remains to this day a timeless collection of articles by prominent scholars including Dreze, Fama, Merton, Modigliani, Samuelson, Stiglitz and Wilson. The second edition makes this classic collection accessible under one cover. I strongly recommend it to the serious student of financial economics."

George M Constantinides Leo Melamed Professor of Finance Graduate School of Business, The University of Chicago

"It took thirty years for the time of this book to come. But come it did — and students of the numerous contemporary treatments of portfolio models do well to acquaint themselves with the wealth of information that Ziemba and Vickson amassed in this comprehensive volume. This publication does not simply have the potential of becoming a classic � it is already one."

Stavros A Zenios University of Cyprus and The Wharton Financial Institutions Center

"It is a testament to the foresight of the editors that much of current research in financial economics can be traced back to the papers and mind expanding exercises contained in this book. In fact, so many hidden gems remain unexploited that this handbook will almost surely also contain the foundations for many future classics."