About StochFin2004
StochFin2004 is an abbreviation for the
Autumn School & International Conference on Stochastic
Finance.
The Autumn
School will take place in Coimbra (Portugal),
at the Observatório Astronómico de Coimbra, from 20 to
24 September, 2004. It is expected that its audience will
consist of graduate students, young researchers and people
related to finance enterprises.
The International
Conference will take place in Lisbon (Portugal),
at Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão (ISEG), from
26 to 30 September, 2004.
Goals
Broadly speaking, the goals of this
event are the following:
Audience
The Autumn
School is intended to be addressed to a
wide audience.
It is meant to be self-contained and
to require as little background as possible either in
finance or mathematics so that its topics are accessible
to mathematicians, economists, managers, business people
and also to advanced undergraduate, master and Ph.D. students
either in Mathematics or Economy and Management who wish
to deepen their knowledge in the use of mathematical techniques
in finance.
The International
Conference will be addressed to specialists
and researchers in mathematics, economy and management,
but will also have some sections devoted to economists,
managers and business people in order to develop the contact
between university and financial business.
Justification
Mathematics, as the language of science,
has always played a role in the development of knowledge
and technology. Presently, the "high-tech" character of
modern business has increased the need for advanced methods,
which rely, to a large extent, on mathematical techniques
and seem indispensable for competitiveness of modern enterprises.
It became essential for the financial analyst to possess
a high degree of proficiency in the mathematical techniques.
This fact gave rise to the development
of a new area in Mathematics which interests either mathematicians
or business people in a fruitful combination that stimulates
research from a theoretical point of view with the aim
to answer the need for highly sophisticated mathematical
techniques within the business sector.
In fact, Financial Mathematics is now
a flourishing area of modern science. Since the pioneering
works of Black, Scholes and Merton, research has led to
the rapid development of a substantial body of knowledge,
with plenty of applications to the common functioning
of the world's financial institutions. For a responsible
approach to the trading, asset management and risk control
of complicated financial positions, a solid knowledge
on the foundations and techniques of quantitative finance
is essential.
