Occupation times of general Lévy processes

Abstract

For an arbitrary Lévy process $X$ which is not a compound Poisson process, we are interested in its occupation times. We use a quite novel and useful approach to derive formulas for the Laplace transform of the joint distribution of $X$ and its occupation times. Our formulas are compact, and more importantly, the forms of the formulas clearly demonstrate the essential quantities for the calculation of occupation times of $X$. It is believed that our results are important not only for the study of stochastic processes, but also for financial applications.