Stability and sensitivity analysis of stochastic programs with second order dominance constraints

In this paper we present stability and sensitivity analysis of a stochastic optimizationproblem with stochastic second order dominance constraints. We consider perturbation of theunderlying probability measure in the space of regular measures equipped with pseudometricdiscrepancy distance ( [30]). By exploiting a result on error bound in semi-infinite programmingdue to Gugat [13], we show under the Slater constraint qualification that the optimal valuefunction is Lipschitz continuous and the optimal solution set mapping is upper semicontinuouswith respect to the perturbation of the probability measure. In particular, we consider the case when the probability measure is approximated by empirical probability measure and show the exponential rate of convergence of optimal solution obtained from solving the approximation problem. The analysis is extended to the stationary points when the objective function is nonconvex

Quantitative stability analysis of stochastic generalized equations

We consider the solution of a system of stochastic generalized equations (SGE) where the underlying functions are mathematical expectation of random set-valued mappings. SGE has many applications such as characterizing optimality conditions of a nonsmooth stochastic optimization problem or equilibrium conditions of a stochastic equilibrium problem. We derive quantitative continuity of expected value of the set-valued mapping with respect to the variation of the underlying probability measure in a metric space. This leads to the subsequent qualitative and quantitative stability analysis of solution set mappings of the SGE. Under some metric regularity conditions, we derive Aubin's property of the solution set mapping with respect to the change of probability measure. The established results are applied to stability analysis of stochastic variational inequality, stationary points of classical one stage and two stage stochastic minimization problems, two stage stochastic mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints and stochastic programs with second order dominance constraints

Stochastic programming models and methods for portfolio optimization and risk management

This project is focused on stochastic models and methods and their application in portfolio optimization and risk management. In particular it involves development and analysis of novel numerical methods for solving these types of problem. First, we study new numerical methods for a general second order stochastic dominance model where the underlying functions are not necessarily linear.Specifically, we penalize the second order stochastic dominance constraints to the objective under Slater’s constraint qualification and then apply the well known stochastic approximation method and the level function methods to solve the penalized problem and present the corresponding convergence analysis. All methods are applied to some portfolio optimization problems, where the underlying functions are not necessarily linear all results suggests that the portfolio strategy generated by the second order stochastic dominance model outperform the strategy generated by the Markowitz model in a sense of having higher return and lower risk. Furthermore a nonlinear supply chain problem is considered, where the performance of the level function method is compared to the cutting plane method. The results suggests that the level function method is more efficient in a sense of having lower CPU time as well as being less sensitive to the problem size. This is followed by study of multivariate stochastic dominance constraints. We propose a penalization scheme for the multivariate stochastic dominance constraint and present the analysis regarding the Slater constraint qualification. The penalized problem is solved by the level function methods and a modified cutting plane method and compared to the cutting surface method proposed in [70] and the linearized method proposed in [4]. The convergence analysis regarding the proposed algorithms are presented. The proposed numerical schemes are applied to a generic budget allocation problem where it is shown that the proposed methods outperform the linearized method when the problem size is big. Moreover, a portfolio optimization problem is considered where it is shown that the a portfolio strategy generated by the multivariate second order stochastic dominance model outperform the portfolio strategy generated by the Markowitz model in sense of having higher return and lower risk. Also the performance of the algorithms is investigated with respect to the computation time and the problem size. It is shown that the level function method and the cutting plane method outperform the cutting surface method in a sense of both having lower CPU time as well as being less sensitive to the problem size. Finally, reward-risk analysis is studied as an alternative to stochastic dominance. Specifically, we study robust reward-risk ratio optimization. We propose two robust formulations, one based on mixture distribution, and the other based on the first order moment approach. We propose a sample average approximation formulation as well as a penalty scheme for the two robust formulations respectively and solve the latter with the level function method. The convergence analysis are presented and the proposed models are applied to Sortino ratio and some numerical test results are presented. The numerical results suggests that the robust formulation based on the first order moment results in the most conservative portfolio strategy compared to the mixture distribution model and the nominal model

GENERALIZED STOCHASTIC DOMINANCE: AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION

Use of generalized stochastic dominance (GSD) requires one to place lower and upper bounds on the risk aversion coefficient. This study showed that breakeven risk aversion coefficients found assuming the exponential utility function delineate the places where GSD preferences switch between prospects. However, between these break points, multiple, overlapping GSD intervals can be found. Consequently, when one does not have risk aversion coefficient information, discovery of breakeven coefficients instead of GSD use is recommended. The investigation also showed GSD results are insensitive to wealth and data scaling but are sensitive to rounding.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,