A backward stochastic differential equation (BSDE) is a
stochastic differential equation
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 an ...
with a terminal condition in which the solution is required to be adapted with respect to an underlying filtration. BSDEs naturally arise in various applications such as
stochastic control
Stochastic control or stochastic optimal control is a sub field of control theory that deals with the existence of uncertainty either in observations or in the noise that drives the evolution of the system. The system designer assumes, in a Bayesi ...
,
mathematical finance
Mathematical finance, also known as quantitative finance and financial mathematics, is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with mathematical modeling in the financial field.
In general, there exist two separate branches of finance that req ...
, and nonlinear
Feynman-Kac formula.
Background
Backward stochastic differential equations were introduced by
Jean-Michel Bismut in 1973 in the linear case and by
Étienne Pardoux and
Shige Peng in 1990 in the nonlinear case.
Mathematical framework
Fix a terminal time
and a
probability space
In probability theory, a probability space or a probability triple (\Omega, \mathcal, P) is a mathematical construct that provides a formal model of a random process or "experiment". For example, one can define a probability space which models ...
. Let
be a
Brownian motion
Brownian motion is the random motion of particles suspended in a medium (a liquid or a gas). The traditional mathematical formulation of Brownian motion is that of the Wiener process, which is often called Brownian motion, even in mathematical ...
with natural filtration
. A backward stochastic differential equation is an integral equation of the type
where
is called the generator of the BSDE, the terminal condition
is an
-measurable random variable, and the solution
consists of stochastic processes
and
which are adapted to the filtration
.
Example
In the case
, the BSDE () reduces to
If
, then it follows from the
martingale representation theorem
In probability theory, the martingale representation theorem states that a random variable with finite variance that is measurable with respect to the filtration generated by a Brownian motion can be written in terms of an Itô integral with res ...
, that there exists a unique stochastic process
such that