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An investment-consumption arbitrage is an admissible trading plan that starts with zero capital, withdraws nonnegative consumption at every date, and ends with no unpaid debt, with positive consumption occurring with positive probability. One may include final liquidation as the last consumption payment; equivalently require nonnegative terminal wealth and count its positive liquidation value.

The budget must be self-financing apart from these withdrawals: each withdrawal is funded by asset holdings, not by outside money. The terminal solvency condition is essential. Borrowing money, consuming it immediately and leaving a negative terminal balance is not an arbitrage. In a model with a positive numéraire, unused positive terminal wealth can be paid out as final consumption, connecting this definition to pure-investment arbitrage.

We prove the positive state-price density alternative using finite-dimensional convex cones. Put $w=(1+\Vert A_1\Vert {)}^{-1}$ and defineAll displayed expectations are finite, since $w\Vert A_1\Vert \le 1$. The set $D$ is a convex cone, so $K$ is a closed convex cone. A vector $x$ is nonnegative on $K$ exactly when $x^{\top }{A}_1\ge 0$ almost surely. Indeed, one direction follows by taking every nonnegative bounded test weight $f$; for the other direction, if $x^{\top }{A}_1<0$ on a set of positive probability, take its indicator as $f$ to obtain a strictly negative expectation. This also identifies $K$ as the closed cone generated by the support of a probability distribution of $A_1$.

The three cases $A_0\notin K$, $A_0\in K\setminus \mathrm{ri}K$, and $A_0\in \mathrm{ri}K$ are treated below. They give respectively a negative-cost separating portfolio, a supporting zero-cost portfolio with a strictly positive payoff on an event of positive probability, or the required positive pricing weight. Thus the alternatives are exhaustive.

They are mutually exclusive. If $A_0=\mathbb{E}[\nu A_1]$ with $\nu >0$ and a portfolio has nonnegative payoff, then $x^{\top }{A}_0=\mathbb{E}[\nu x^{\top }{A}_1]\ge 0$. A negative initial cost is impossible. If the payoff is strictly positive with positive probability, this expectation is strictly positive, so nonpositive initial cost is impossible too. The given weighted integrability permits taking the expectation of this scalar product.

In a one-period market, $x^{\top }{A}_0$ is the portfolio's initial cost and $x^{\top }{A}_1$ its terminal value. The first two cases are investment-consumption arbitrage: nonnegative wealth can be taken out at both dates, with a strict benefit at one of them. If a strictly positive bank account is traded, any negative initial cost can be invested in it, converting the opportunity into a zero-cost arbitrage with nonnegative terminal payoff and positive payoff with positive probability.

In the third case, $\nu$ is a strictly positive state-price density. If a traded numéraire has price $B_0>0$ and terminal value $B_1>0$, its pricing identity is $\mathbb{E}[\nu B_1]=B_0$. ConsequentlyThe density has mean one and is strictly positive, so $Q$ is equivalent to the physical measure. Thus discounted asset prices are martingales in the one-period sense. This is the fundamental theorem of asset pricing formulation of absence of arbitrage; normalization to a probability measure uses the positive traded numéraire, not an unsupported assumption that $\mathbb{E}\nu =1$.

For holdings $h\in {\mathbb{R}}^n$, let $V_0=h\cdot P_0$ and $V_1=h\cdot P_1$. Under the investment-consumption arbitrage convention used here, an arbitrage satisfiesThe initial consumption is $-V_0$, and the terminal consumption is $V_1$: there is a possible gain with no external funding and no negative consumption. A pure-investment arbitrage additionally requires $V_0=0$. This convention is important because the last part distinguishes initial consumption from pure investment.

For initial capital zero and a predictable strategy $H$, let $C_t^{0,H}$ denote consumption after the time-$t$ portfolio payoff and before choosing the next holdings. An investment-consumption arbitrage haswith strictly positive consumption at some date with positive probability. A terminal-consumption arbitrage is a finite-horizon such strategy whose consumption is zero before its terminal date $T$, while $C_T^{0,H}\ge 0$ almost surely and $\mathbb{P}(C_T^{0,H}>0)>0$.