A locally-built, LLM-digested index of recent arXiv papers in quant finance, geometry/topology, and statistical ML — keyword search served straight from SQLite on this machine.
The paper proposes a method to learn and leverage contextual preference distributions for better decision-making.
problem Heterogeneous and context-dependent human preferences in decision-making problems.
method A sequential learning-and-optimization pipeline using a bounded-variance score function gradient estimator to train a predictive model mapping contextual features to preference distributions.
result The approach reduces average post-decision surprise by up to 25 times compared to risk-averse baselines in a ridesharing environment.
We model human decision-making behaviors in a risk-taking task using inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) for the purposes of understanding real human decision making under risk. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work applying IRL to reveal the implicit reward function in human risk-taking decision making…
Eradicating hunger and malnutrition is a key development goal of the 21st century. We address the problem of optimally identifying seed varieties to reliably increase crop yield within a risk-sensitive decision-making framework. Specifically, we introduce a novel hierarchical machine learning mechanism for predicting c…
In real-world decision-making problems, for instance in the fields of finance, robotics or autonomous driving, keeping uncertainty under control is as important as maximizing expected returns. Risk aversion has been addressed in the reinforcement learning literature through risk measures related to the variance of retu…
We introduce the functional bandit problem, where the objective is to find an arm that optimises a known functional of the unknown arm-reward distributions. These problems arise in many settings such as maximum entropy methods in natural language processing, and risk-averse decision-making, but current best-arm identif…
Different models of capital exchange among economic agents have been proposed recently trying to explain the emergence of Pareto's wealth power law distribution. One important factor to be considered is the existence of risk aversion. In this paper we study a model where agents posses different levels of risk aversion,…
Robo-advisors estimate clients' risk aversion using interactive questionnaires.
problem Estimating risk aversion of non-expert clients using adaptive questionnaires.
method Model risk aversion with cost functions and spectral risk measures. Use inverse reinforcement learning to design questions maximizing distinguishing power.
result Designing questions by maximizing distinguishing power achieves satisfactory accuracy in learning risk aversion with fewer than 50 questions.
Risk aversion is a key element of utility maximizing hedge strategies; however, it has typically been assigned an arbitrary value in the literature. This paper instead applies a GARCH-in-Mean (GARCH-M) model to estimate a time-varying measure of risk aversion that is based on the observed risk preferences of energy hed…
The standard asset pricing models (the CCAPM and the Epstein-Zin non-expected utility model) counterintuitively predict that equilibrium asset prices can rise if the representative agent's risk aversion increases. If the income effect, which implies enhanced saving as a result of an increase in risk aversion, dominates…
We propose and analyze StoROO, an algorithm for risk optimization on stochastic black-box functions derived from StoOO. Motivated by risk-averse decision making fields like agriculture, medicine, biology or finance, we do not focus on the mean payoff but on generic functionals of the return distribution. We provide a g…
Stochastic domains often involve risk-averse decision makers. While recent work has focused on how to model risk in Markov decision processes using risk measures, it has not addressed the problem of solving large risk-averse formulations. In this paper, we propose and analyze a new method for solving large risk-averse …
Is the elasticity of intertemporal substitution (EIS) more or less than one? This question can be answered by confronting theoretical results of asset pricing models with investor behaviour during episodes of stock market panic. If we consider these episodes as periods of high risk aversion, then lower asset prices are…
Spectral risk measures are attractive risk measures as they allow the user to obtain risk measures that reflect their risk-aversion functions. To date there has been very little guidance on the choice of risk-aversion functions underlying spectral risk measures. This paper addresses this issue by examining two popular …
The geometric Lévy model (GLM) is a natural generalisation of the geometric Brownian motion model (GBM) used in the derivation of the Black-Scholes formula. The theory of such models simplifies considerably if one takes a pricing kernel approach. In one dimension, once the underlying Lévy process has been specified, th…
Artificial intelligence, or AI, enhancements are increasingly shaping our daily lives. Financial decision-making is no exception to this. We introduce the notion of AI Alter Egos, which are shadow robo-investors, and use a unique data set covering brokerage accounts for a large cross-section of investors over a sample …
In this paper the fractional trading ansatz of money management is reconsidered with special attention to chance and risk parts in the goal function of the related optimization problem. By changing the goal function with due regards to other risk measures like current drawdowns, the optimal fraction solutions reflect t…
The paper characterizes equilibrium strategies under random risk aversion, showing unique solutions based on risk aversion distribution.
problem Characterizing equilibrium strategies in a continuous-time portfolio selection problem under random risk aversion.
method Provided a complete characterization of all deterministic equilibrium strategies in closed form, analyzing the structure of the solution based on the distribution of random risk aversion.
result The equilibrium is unique (if exists) when the expectation of random risk aversion is finite, but infinite expectation leads to either infinitely many equilibria or a unique trivial one.