Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 32 1 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Treat each column as the payoff from one unit of initial investment, so the cost of holdings is . The first asset weakly dominates the third at the same price, and so does the second. Long the first and short the third gives zero initial cost and terminal payoff . Long the second and short the third gives payoff , also at zero cost. These are arbitrages provided the displayed states have positive probability. Combining them gives the zero-cost position with payoff .
More generally, imposing zero cost means , and its payoff is . Thus every with at least one positive gives a pure-investment arbitrage. The market is not arbitrage-free.
There is nevertheless no arbitrage of the other requested kind, with every future net cash flow identically zero. Indeed the middle-state payoff is , so a zero terminal payoff already forces zero initial cost. The other two states then force , hence . Equivalently, the return matrix has determinant and is invertible. ThereforeThe unique vector pricing the three unit-investment payoffs is . It is nonnegative but not strictly positive. This illustrates why nonnegative state prices need not exclude arbitrage: strictly positive state prices would assign positive cost to either of the nonzero nonnegative payoffs above.