Absolute Continuity of Semimartingales

Abstract

We derive equivalent conditions for the (local) absolute continuity of two laws of semimartingales on random sets. Our result generalizes previous results for classical semimartingales by replacing a strong uniqueness assumption by a weaker uniqueness assumption. The main tool is a generalized Girsanov's theorem, which relates laws of two possibly explosive semimartingales to a candidate density process. Its proof is based on an extension theorem for consistent families of probability measures. Moreover, we show that in a one-dimensional It\^o-diffusion setting our result reproduces the known deterministic characterizations for (local) absolute continuity. Finally, we give a Khasminskii-type test for the absolute continuity of multi-dimensional It\^o-diffusions and derive linear growth conditions for the martingale property of stochastic exponentials.