Stationary Distribution of a Mean-Reverting Process with Poisson Jumps
Summary
The document studies a process that decays toward zero between random upward jumps, with jump arrivals following a Poisson process and jump sizes also Poisson-distributed. The question is whether its stationary probability density has a tractable explicit form, in a setting where a jump process leads to an infinite-order Kramers–Moyal equation.
The answer transforms the process by multiplying it by an exponential factor, expressing the result as a sum over jump times. It then conditions on the number of jumps and writes the distribution as a mixture over those counts, with an integral over ordered arrival times. This gives a formal route to the distribution, but the resulting integral is described as difficult and no closed-form density is supplied. The discussion therefore outlines a representation rather than a practical calculation method, and it does not provide numerical approximations or trading applications.
Key ideas
- The process combines exponential mean reversion with compound Poisson jumps.
- An exponential transformation expresses the process through contributions from individual jump times.
- Conditioning on the number of arrivals yields a mixture representation for the distribution.
- The ordered-time integral is difficult to evaluate, and the answer gives no explicit stationary density.
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# Probability density function of simple equation, compound Poisson noise
# Probability density function of simple equation, compound Poisson noise
I would like to find the probability density function (at stationarity) of the random variable $X_t$, where: \begin{equation*} dX_t = -aX_t dt + d N_t, \end{equation*} $a$ is a constant and $N_t$ is a compound Poisson process with Poisson jump size distribution.
In other words, $X_t$ solves the ordinary differential equation $\frac{d X_t}{dt} + a X_t=0$, but at times $t_i$ say, where the $t_i$ are exponentially distributed with mean $1/k$, $X_t$ increases by an integer drawn from $M\sim Poi(m)$ (i.e. $X_t$ gets a Poisson-distributed "kick" upwards at exponentially distributed intervals).
Is there a way of obtaining the pdf for this random variable $X$? If I have understood things correctly, the Kramers-Moyal equation for the pdf of $X$ is of infinite order because it is a jump Markov process. I have also tried looking at the Master Equation but I get lost. However, I am new to this literature and was wondering if the solution is easy for those in the know, since it is such a simple system.
Many thanks for your help!
Addendum:
In the following paper, an expression for the Fourier transform of the probability density function is provided for general jump size distribution (see Section 5.2):
Generalized Fokker-Planck equation: Derivation and exact solutions
or in the ArXiv: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0808.0274.pdf
For the case I am interested in (Poisson jump size distribution), I don't think the Fourier transform can be inverted analytically. However, the paper gives the exact solution for exponentially-distributed jump sizes as an example.
Thank you to those who have answered or commented so far. It is actually very helpful for me to know that there isn't a straightforward way to obtain the pdf (if at all). Nevertheless, if anyone else out there does know of a way I'd be interested to hear about it.
## Answer by M. Jeunesse (score 4)
https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/25280
I don't think you can have an explicit form.
Let $Y_t= e^{at}X_t$ then :
$$ Y_t -Y_0 =\sum_{i=1}^{N_t}e^{aT_i} $$ where $(T_i)_{i=1...N_t}$ are the jump times of your poisson process.
then $$P(Y_t\leq x)=\sum_{n\geq 0}\frac{(mt)^n}{n!}e^{-mt}P(\sum_{i=1}^{N_t}e^{aT_i}\leq x|N_t=n)$$
$$P(\sum_{i=1}^{N_t}e^{aT_i}\leq x|N_t=n) =\int_{[0,+\infty]^n}\mathbf{1}_{\sum_{i=1}^n e^{at_i}\leq x}\mathbf{1}_{t_1<t_2<...<t_n}m^ne^{-mt_n} dt_1dt_2\dots dt_n$$
and then it becomes difficult.Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)
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