Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2016 / iii / Paper 201 / 2 / c

The overshoot hypothesis as printed cannot hold for every $R>0$. For $R\le 1$, $T_R=0$ and $M_{T_R}=1$; choosing $R<1/\tau$ contradicts $M_{T_R}\le \tau R$. The intended and sufficient assumption is the overshoot bound for $R\ge 1$, on the event $\{T_R<\infty \}$. We use those thresholds below; when $R\le 1$, the requested stopped-time bound is trivial because $T\wedge T_R=0$.

Fix $R\ge 1$ and set $S=T\wedge T_R$. By part (a), the stopped martingale satisfies $0\le M_{S\wedge n}\le \tau R$: before stopping it is below $R$, at $T$ it is zero, and at $T_R$ the assumed overshoot bound applies. Thus the square of this stopped process is integrable. For $\Delta M_n=M_{n+1}-M_n$,The event $\{S>n\}$ is ${\mathcal{F}}_n$-measurable and contained in $\{T>n\}$. Conditional expectation of the linear term is zero, while the variance assumption makes the remaining conditional expectation nonnegative. The stopped increments here are bounded by the stopping and overshoot bounds, so all conditional expectations are legitimate. ConsequentlySince $X_0=1$, we have ${\sigma }^2\mathbb{E}(S\wedge n)\le \mathbb{E}{M}_{S\wedge n}^2-1$. Bounded-time optional stopping theorem also gives $\mathbb{E}{M}_{S\wedge n}=1$, soApply the monotone convergence theorem to $S\wedge n$. This proves the stronger estimate $(\tau R-1)/{\sigma }^2$ and hence the requested absorption-time bound from conditional variance and overshoot:In particular this stopping time is finite almost surely. For $0<R\le 1$, $S=0$ and $X_n=1$ is a constant submartingale, while the stopping-time expectation is zero.