ON A PARABOLIC FREE BOUNDARY EQUATION MODELING PRICE FORMATION

We discuss existence and uniqueness of solutions for a one-dimensional parabolic evolution equation with a free boundary. This problem was introduced by Lasry and Lions as description of the dynamical formation of the price of a trading good. Short time existence and uniqueness is established by a contraction argument. Then we discuss the issue of global-in-time-extension of the local solution which is closely related to the regularity of the free boundary. We also present numerical results.