Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ii Paper 4 29K a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
In the one-period building block of the Cox--Ross--Rubinstein model, the money-market account grows by a deterministic factor , while the stock grows independently at each time byThus and . Equivalently, the discounted stock has multipliers and .
The model has no arbitrage precisely when the risk-free return lies strictly between the stock returns:Indeed, failure of either strict inequality gives a one-period arbitrage, while under the strict inequalities the probabilitylies in . Taking the moves independent under with up probability makes the discounted stock a martingale, since . This is the unique Risk-neutral probability in the Cox--Ross--Rubinstein model, hence the unique equivalent martingale measure.