Related papers: Clearing Up the Effective Lower Bound Morass

We consider a discrete-time Markov decision process with Borel state and action spaces. The performance criterion is to maximize a total expected {utility determined by unbounded return function. It is shown the existence of optimal…

For a discrete time Markov chain and in line with Strotz' consistent planning we develop a framework for problems of optimal stopping that are time-inconsistent due to the consideration of a non-linear function of an expected reward. We…

In the context of the Dragulescu-Yakovenko (2000) model, we show that empirical income distribution with truncated datasets, cannot be properly modeled by the one-parameter exponential distribution. However, a truncated version…

We study very simple sorting algorithms based on a probabilistic comparator model. In our model, errors in comparing two elements are due to (1) the energy or effort put in the comparison and (2) the difference between the compared…

In this paper we develop a statistical estimation technique to recover the transition kernel $P$ of a Markov chain $X=(X_m)_{m \in \mathbb N}$ in presence of censored data. We consider the situation where only a sub-sequence of $X$ is…

Doubly robust methods hold considerable promise for off-policy evaluation in Markov decision processes (MDPs) under sequential ignorability: They have been shown to converge as $1/\sqrt{T}$ with the horizon $T$, to be statistically…

Due to uncertainties and the complicated intrinsic dynamics of power systems, it is difficult to predict the cascading failure paths once the cascades occur. This makes it challenging to achieve the effective power system protection against…

We consider a Markov chain on $\mathbb{R}^d$ with invariant measure $\mu$. We are interested in the rate of convergence of the empirical measures towards the invariant measure with respect to various dual distances, including in particular…

In this work, we study a natural nonparametric estimator of the transition probability matrices of a finite controlled Markov chain. We consider an offline setting with a fixed dataset, collected using a so-called logging policy. We develop…

Encouraged by decision makers' appetite for future information on topics ranging from elections to pandemics, and enabled by the explosion of data and computational methods, model based forecasts have garnered increasing influence on a…

We tackle the problem of estimating risk measures of the infinite-horizon discounted cost within a Markov cost process. The risk measures we study include variance, Value-at-Risk (VaR), and Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR). First, we show…

Continuous-time Markov chains are mathematical models that are used to describe the state-evolution of dynamical systems under stochastic uncertainty, and have found widespread applications in various fields. In order to make these models…

The Importance Markov chain is a novel algorithm bridging the gap between rejection sampling and importance sampling, moving from one to the other through a tuning parameter. Based on a modified sample of an instrumental Markov chain…

Finite element model updating is challenging because 1) the problem is oftentimes underdetermined while the measurements are limited and/or incomplete; 2) many combinations of parameters may yield responses that are similar with respect to…

We study unconstrained and constrained linear quadratic problems and investigate the suboptimality of the model predictive control (MPC) method applied to such problems. Considering MPC as an approximate scheme for solving the related fixed…

We examine the non-Markovian nature of human mobility by exposing the inability of Markov models to capture criticality in human mobility. In particular, the assumed Markovian nature of mobility was used to establish a theoretical upper…

We present a learning model predictive control (MPC) scheme for chance-constrained Markov jump systems with unknown switching probabilities. Using samples of the underlying Markov chain, ambiguity sets of transition probabilities are…

A finite ergodic Markov chain exhibits cutoff if its distance to equilibrium remains close to its initial value over a certain number of iterations and then abruptly drops to near 0 on a much shorter time scale. Originally discovered in the…

Many results have been proved for various nuclear norm penalized estimators of the uniform sampling matrix completion problem. However, most of these estimators are not robust: in most of the cases the quadratic loss function and its…

Motivated by robotic surveillance applications, this paper studies the novel problem of maximizing the return time entropy of a Markov chain, subject to a graph topology with travel times and stationary distribution. The return time entropy…