Exact higher-order moments for linear non-homogeneous stochastic differential equation

Abstract

This paper investigates the moments of a stochastic process that satisfies the one-dimensional linear stochastic differential equation (SDE) with nonlinear time-dependent drift and diffusion coefficients. The goal is to derive formulas for the nth exact moment, that instead of seeking the transition density function by solving the Fokker-Plank equations or moment-generating functions, which can be difficult to solve in closed form. We will appropriately apply Itô’s formula and the properties of the Wiener process with a constant drift and diffusion term, which is a Gaussian process to obtain the exact higher-order moments.