English

A variational formula for risk-sensitive reward

Optimization and Control 2015-01-06 v1 Information Theory math.IT Probability

Abstract

We derive a variational formula for the optimal growth rate of reward in the infinite horizon risk-sensitive control problem for discrete time Markov decision processes with compact metric state and action spaces, extending a formula of Donsker and Varadhan for the Perron-Frobenius eigenvalue of a positive operator. This leads to a concave maximization formulation of the problem of determining this optimal growth rate.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1501.00676,
  title  = {A variational formula for risk-sensitive reward},
  author = {Venkatachalam Anantharam and Vivek Shripad Borkar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1501.00676},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

35 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T07:50:19.720Z