Arrow–Debreu state price ($q_s=p_s{Z}_s$)

On a finite state space, the Arrow–Debreu state price is the current price of a payoff equal to one in state $s$ and zero elsewhere. It equals the physical state probability times the state-price density in that state. With a riskless asset of deterministic prices $B_0,B_1$, the Arrow state prices sum to $B_0/B_1$. Normalizing them gives the risk-neutral probabilities, while division by the physical probabilities instead recovers the pricing density.

If a traded payoff matrix $A$ has initial price vector $q=A^{T}p$ with $p\ge 0$, there cannot be a negative-cost portfolio with nonnegative terminal payoff. Nevertheless a nonzero nonnegative attainable payoff supported only in zero-price states can cost zero and give an arbitrage. When every state has positive physical probability, excluding this possibility requires strictly positive Arrow state prices, not merely a nonnegative supporting vector.