Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-stochastic-differential-equations-and-brownian-motion-in-complex-analysis-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2008/a/1/c/solution

Lévy's characterization of Brownian motion states that a real continuous local martingale with and quadratic variation is a standard Brownian motion with respect to its filtration. Equivalently, its increments are independent of the past and have centered normal distribution with variances equal to elapsed times.
Let . The running maximum is continuous and adapted, so is bounded and progressively measurable process. It has a predictable version for integration; changing its value at the single switching time does not change its stochastic integral. Thus is a continuous local martingale starting at zero. Since ,
Lévy's characterization of Brownian motion yields is standard Brownian motion. The sign depends on the entire past through the running maximum, but the unit quadratic-variation rate is exactly what the characterization needs.

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