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Related papers: Boosting CVaR Policy Optimization with Quantile Gr…

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In this work, we study the sample complexity problem of risk-sensitive Reinforcement Learning (RL) with a generative model, where we aim to maximize the Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) with risk tolerance level $\tau$ at each step, a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Zilong Deng , Simon Khan , Shaofeng Zou

Policy optimization methods are popular reinforcement learning algorithms, because their incremental and on-policy nature makes them more stable than the value-based counterparts. However, the same properties also make them slow to converge…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-01 Andrea Zanette , Ching-An Cheng , Alekh Agarwal

Chance-constrained programs (CCPs) provide a powerful modeling framework for decision-making under uncertainty, but their nonconvex feasible regions make them computationally challenging. A widely used convex inner approximation replaces…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-31 Rui Chen , Nan Jiang

We propose an iterative gradient-based algorithm to efficiently solve the portfolio selection problem with multiple spectral risk constraints. Since the conditional value at risk (CVaR) is a special case of the spectral risk measure, our…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2015-03-26 Carlos Abad , Garud Iyengar

Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) is a widely used risk metric in applications such as finance. We derive concentration bounds for CVaR estimates, considering separately the cases of light-tailed and heavy-tailed distributions. In the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-27 Prashanth L. A. , Krishna Jagannathan , Ravi Kumar Kolla

In this work, we address risk-averse Bayes-adaptive reinforcement learning. We pose the problem of optimising the conditional value at risk (CVaR) of the total return in Bayes-adaptive Markov decision processes (MDPs). We show that a policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-27 Marc Rigter , Bruno Lacerda , Nick Hawes

In high-stakes machine learning applications, it is crucial to not only perform well on average, but also when restricted to difficult examples. To address this, we consider the problem of training models in a risk-averse manner. We propose…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-09 Sebastian Curi , Kfir. Y. Levy , Stefanie Jegelka , Andreas Krause

In safety-critical decision-making, the environment may evolve over time, and the learner adjusts its risk level accordingly. This work investigates risk-averse online optimization in dynamic environments with varying risk levels, employing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-30 Siyi Wang , Zifan Wang , Karl H. Johansson

Risk-averse decision-making under uncertainty in partially observable domains is a central challenge in artificial intelligence and is essential for developing reliable autonomous agents. The formal framework for such problems is the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-02-27 Yaacov Pariente , Vadim Indelman

In this paper we address the problem of decision making within a Markov decision process (MDP) framework where risk and modeling errors are taken into account. Our approach is to minimize a risk-sensitive conditional-value-at-risk (CVaR)…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2015-06-09 Yinlam Chow , Aviv Tamar , Shie Mannor , Marco Pavone

Accurate computation of robust estimates for extremal quantiles of empirical distributions is an essential task for a wide range of applicative fields, including economic policymaking and the financial industry. Such estimates are…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-11-04 Pietro Bogani , Matteo Fontana , Luca Neri , Simone Vantini

This paper studies optimization of Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with finite state and action sets. It introduces the Dynamically augmented CVaR (DCVaR) risk measure and provides an algorithm for its…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-12 Eugene A. Feinberg , Rui Ding

We study a discrete-time multi-period portfolio optimization problem under an explicit constraint on the Deviation Conditional Value-at-Risk (DCVaR), defined as the excess of Conditional Value-at-Risk over expected terminal wealth. The…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2026-04-17 Jérôme Lelong , Véronique Maume-Deschamps , William Thevenot

The problem of data uncertainty has motivated the incorporation of robust optimization in various arenas, beyond the Markowitz portfolio optimization. This work presents the extension of the robust optimization framework for the…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2019-08-15 Mohammed Bilal Girach , Shashank Oberoi , Siddhartha P. Chakrabarty

This paper addresses risk averse constrained optimization problems where the objective and constraint functions can only be computed by a blackbox subject to unknown uncertainties. To handle mixed aleatory/epistemic uncertainties, the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-10-18 Charles Audet , Jean Bigeon , Romain Couderc , Michael Kokkolaras

Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) are popular risk measures from academic, industrial and regulatory perspectives. The problem of minimizing CVaR is theoretically known to be of Neyman-Pearson type binary solution. We…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2013-08-19 Jing Li , Mingxin Xu

In several real-world applications involving decision making under uncertainty, the traditional expected value objective may not be suitable, as it may be necessary to control losses in the case of a rare but extreme event. Conditional…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-08-07 Ravi Kumar Kolla , Prashanth L. A. , Sanjay P. Bhat , Krishna Jagannathan

The ability to make optimal decisions under uncertainty remains important across a variety of disciplines from portfolio management to power engineering. This generally implies applying some safety margins on uncertain parameters that may…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-03-05 Matt Roveto , Robert Mieth , Yury Dvorkin

Value-at-risk (VaR), also known as quantile, is a crucial risk measure in finance and other fields. However, optimizing VaR metrics in Markov decision processes (MDPs) is challenging because VaR is non-additive and the traditional dynamic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-31 Li Xia , Jinyan Pan

We study risk-sensitive planning under partial observability using the dynamic risk measure Iterated Conditional Value-at-Risk (ICVaR). A policy evaluation algorithm for ICVaR is developed with finite-time performance guarantees that do not…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-29 Yaacov Pariente , Vadim Indelman