In a continuous-time economy, this paper formulates the Epstein-Zin preference for discounted dividends received by an investor as an Epstein-Zin singular control utility. We introduce a backward stochastic differential equation with an aggregator integrated with respect to a singular control, prove its well-posedness, and show that it coincides with the Epstein-Zin singular control utility. We then establish that this formulation is equivalent to a robust dividend policy chosen by the firm's executive under the Maenhout's ambiguity-averse preference. In particular, the robust dividend policy takes the form of a threshold strategy on the firm's surplus process, where the threshold level is characterized as the free boundary of a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman variational inequality. Therefore, dividend-caring investors can choose firms that match their preferences by examining stock's dividend policies and financial statements, whereas executives can make use of dividend to signal their confidence, in the form of ambiguity aversion, on realizing the earnings implied by their financial statements.

Quantum computing may speed up numerical problems involving large matrices that are demanding for classical computers, and active research on this possibility is ongoing. In this work, we propose quantum algorithms for the exact simulation of a normalised correlated Gaussian random vector $|x\rangle=\vec{x}/\lVert\vec{x}\rVert$, $\vec{x}\sim\mathcal{N}(0,Σ)$, and its exponentiation $|e^{\vec{x}} \rangle= e^{\vec{x}}/\lVert e^{\vec{x}}\rVert$. When an $O(\mathrm{polylog} N)$-gate-depth quantum data loader for the covariance matrix $Σ\in\mathbb{R}^{N\times N}$ is available, preparing $|x\rangle$ and $|e^{\vec{x}}\rangle$ require $\widetilde{O}\left(\frac{\lVertΣ\rVert_F}{λ_{\max}}κ^{1.5}\right)$ and $\widetilde{O}\left(\lVert\vec{x}\rVert\frac{\lVertΣ\rVert_F}{λ_{\max}}κ^{1.5}\right)$ elementary gate depth respectively, where $\lVertΣ\rVert_F$, $λ_{\max}$, $κ$ denote the Frobenius norm, maximal eigenvalue, and condition number of $Σ$. Motivated by financial applications, we provide an end-to-end resource analysis when $\vec{x}$ represents a sample path of a Riemann-Liouville or standard fractional Brownian motion, or of a stationary fractional Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. As a concrete example, we construct the quantum state encoding the rough Bergomi variance process and analyse the extraction of the integrated variance via quantum amplitude estimation. Under specific conditions, the dependence of $\lVertΣ\rVert_F/λ_{\max}$ and $κ$ on $N$ is small, and subcubic complexity in $N$ is achieved, indicating a quantum advantage over classical Cholesky-based sampling methods. To our knowledge, this constitutes the first quantum algorithmic framework for the amplitude encoding of exponentiated Gaussian processes, providing foundational primitives for quantum-enhanced financial modelling.

Benchmark hacking refers to tuning a machine learning model to score highly on certain evaluation criteria without improving true generalization or faithfully solving the intended problem. We study this phenomenon in a generic machine learning contest, where each contestant chooses two types of effort: creative effort that improves model capability as desired by the contest host, and mechanistic effort that only improves the model's fitness to the particular task in contest without contributing to true generalization. We establish the existence of a symmetric monotone pure strategy equilibrium in this competition game. It also provides a natural definition of benchmark hacking in this strategic context by comparing a player's equilibrium effort allocation to that of a single-agent baseline scenario. Under our definition, contestants with types below certain threshold (low types) always engage in benchmark hacking, whereas those above the threshold do not. Furthermore, we show that more skewed reward structures (favoring top-ranked contestants) can elicit more desirable contest outcomes. We also provide empirical evidence to support our theoretical predictions.

We study the problem of optimal portfolio selection under stochastic volatility within a continuous time reinforcement learning framework with portfolio constraints. Exploration is modeled through entropy-regularized relaxed controls, where the investor selects probability distributions over admissible portfolio allocations rather than deterministic strategies. Using dynamic programming arguments, we derive the associated entropy-regularized Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation, whose Hamiltonian involves optimization over probability measures supported on a compact control set. We show that the optimal exploratory policy takes the form of a truncated Gaussian distribution characterized by spatial derivatives of the solution of the resulting nonlinear quasilinear parabolic partial differential equation. Under suitable structural conditions on the model coefficients, we prove the existence of classical solutions to this nonlinear HJB equation for the value function. We then establish a verification theorem and analyze the policy-improvement structure induced by the entropy-regularized Hamiltonian, showing how the resulting sequence of PDEs provides a continuous-time interpretation of actor-critic learning dynamics. Finally, our PDE analysis with a semi-closed form of optimal value and optimal policy enables the design of an implementable reinforcement learning algorithm by recasting the optimal problem in a martingale framework.

The emergence of Concentrated Liquidity Market Makers (CLMMs) has made liquidity provision on decentralized exchanges an active and risk-sensitive task. However, the standalone profitability of liquidity provision remains unclear for liquidity providers (LPs) who neither hedge their inventory risk nor receive off-pool profits. This paper studies the actual outcomes of LP activity using historical transaction-level data from WETH/USD liquidity pools on the Base chain across the Uniswap, Aerodrome, PancakeSwap and SushiSwap protocols. We propose a methodology for reconstructing LP PnL dynamics from on-chain events and introduce an original metric that captures both the terminal state of LP capital and its path over time. Based on this framework, we estimate the share of successful LPs, classify their behavior and develop a taxonomy of 15 position types as structural components of PnL. We further identify a distinct class of multi-LPs operating across several pools and show that the dominant profitable position configurations are concentrated around the current pool price. The results show that only about one out of six LPs avoids losses in the selected market segment, raising an open question about the true economic motives of LP participation. Evidence also suggests that successful LPs often close positions before the full range is traversed, making observed behavior closer to profit-target-based strategies.

Text-based measurement in political research often treats classi6ication disagreement as random noise. We examine this assumption using con6idence-weighted human annotations of 5,000 social media messages by U.S. politicians. We 6ind that political communication is generally highly legible, with mean con6idence exceeding 0.99 across message type, partisan bias, and audience classi6ications. However, systematic variation concentrates in the constituency category, which exhibits a 1.79 percentage point penalty in audience classi6ication con6idence. Given the high baseline of agreement, this penalty represents a sharp relative increase in interpretive uncertainty. Within messages, intent remains clear while audience targeting becomes ambiguous. These patterns persist with politician 6ixed effects, suggesting that measurement error in political text is structured by strategic incentives rather than idiosyncratic coder error.

We introduce the Consensus-Bottleneck Asset Pricing Model (CB-APM), which embeds aggregate analyst consensus as a structural bottleneck, treating professional beliefs as a sufficient statistic for the market's high-dimensional information set. Unlike post-hoc explainability approaches, CB-APM achieves interpretability-by-design: the bottleneck constraint functions as an endogenous regularizer that simultaneously improves out-of-sample predictive accuracy and anchors inference to economically interpretable drivers. Portfolios sorted on CB-APM forecasts exhibit a strong monotonic return gradient, robust across macroeconomic regimes. Pricing diagnostics further reveal that the learned consensus encodes priced variation not spanned by canonical factor models, identifying belief-driven risk heterogeneity that standard linear frameworks systematically miss.

This paper studies whether behavioral interventions designed to promote resource conservation in one domain generate spillovers in another. Using a natural field experiment involving over 2,000 residents, we identify the direct and spillover effects of real-time feedback and social comparisons on water and energy consumption. We implement three interventions: two targeting shower use and one targeting air-conditioning use. We find significant reductions in shower use from both water-saving interventions, but no direct effect of the energy-saving intervention on air-conditioning use. For spillovers, we estimate precise null effects of water-saving interventions on air-conditioning use, and of the energy-saving intervention on shower use.

We deal with the optimal execution problem when the broker's goal is to reach a performance barrier avoiding a downside barrier. The performance is provided by the wealth accumulated by trading in the market, the shares detained by the broker evaluated at the market price plus a slippage cost yielding a quadratic inventory cost. Over a short horizon, this type of remuneration leads, at the same time, to a more aggressive and less risky strategy compared to the classical one, and over a long horizon the performance turns to be poorer and more dispersed.

Probabilistic electricity price forecasting (PEPF) is vital for short-term electricity markets, yet the multivariate nature of day-ahead prices - spanning 24 consecutive hours - remains underexplored. At the same time, real-time decision-making requires methods that are both accurate and fast. We introduce an online algorithm for multivariate distributional regression models, allowing efficient modeling of the conditional means, variances, and dependence structures of electricity prices. The approach combines multivariate distributional regression with online coordinate descent and LASSO-type regularization (absolute shrinkage and selection operator), enabling scalable estimation in high-dimensional covariate spaces. Additionally, we propose a regularized estimation path over increasingly complex dependence structures, allowing for early stopping and avoiding overfitting. In a case study using historical data from the German day-ahead market, the proposed method yields interpretable and well-calibrated joint prediction intervals for the 24-dimensional price distribution and provides robust performance across a range of proper scoring rules. The results underscore the importance of modeling the dependence structure of electricity prices. Furthermore, we analyze the trade-off between predictive accuracy and computational costs for batch and online estimation and provide a high-performing open-source Python implementation in the ondil package.

Financial bond yield forecasting is challenging due to data scarcity, nonlinear macroeconomic dependencies, and evolving market conditions. In this paper, we propose a novel framework that leverages Causal Generative Adversarial Networks (CausalGANs) and Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) reinforcement learning (RL) to generate high-fidelity synthetic bond yield data for four major bond categories (AAA, BAA, US10Y, Junk). By incorporating 12 key macroeconomic variables, we ensure statistical fidelity by preserving essential market properties. To transform this market dependent synthetic data into actionable insights, we employ a finetuned Large Language Model (LLM) Qwen2.5-7B that generates trading signals (BUY/HOLD/SELL), risk assessments, and volatility projections. We use automated, human and LLM evaluations, all of which demonstrate that our framework improves forecasting performance over existing methods, with statistical validation via predictive accuracy, MAE evaluation(0.103%), profit/loss evaluation (60% profit rate), LLM evaluation (3.37/5) and expert assessments scoring 4.67 out of 5. The reinforcement learning-enhanced synthetic data generation achieves the least Mean Absolute Error of 0.103, demonstrating its effectiveness in replicating real-world bond market dynamics. We not only enhance data-driven trading strategies but also provides a scalable, high-fidelity synthetic financial data pipeline for risk & volatility management and investment decision-making. This work establishes a bridge between synthetic data generation, LLM driven financial forecasting, and language model evaluation, contributing to AI-driven financial decision-making.