The threshold and constant proportion portfolio insurance (CPPI) strategies are considered for their application in managing defined-contribution (DC) pension plans. The pension plans invest in two types of asset, riskless asset and stocks, or bonds and stocks. When the objective of pension plan is to maximize expected terminal utility that is a function of terminal pension wealth with final wa...

Abstract: We consider the following problem: is there a rational or fair price for the reports made by analysts, experts, investor advisers concerning the rate of return (RR) of investments? We define the notion of the value of information included in the family of probability distributions of the RR. Next, we illustrate this notion for a linear-quadratic utility function.

We propose a framework for measuring the productivity of High Performance Computing (HPC) systems, based on common economic definitions of productivity and on Utility Theory. We discuss how these definitions can capture essential aspects of HPC systems, such as the importance of time-to-solution and the trade-off between programming time and execution time. Finally, we outline a research progra...

We introduce an inference method based on quantiles matching, which is useful for situations where the density function does not have a closed form –but it is simple to simulate– and/or moments do not exist. Functions of theoretical quantiles, which depend on the parameters of the assumed probability law, are matched with sample quantiles, which depend on observations. Since the theoretical qua...

We consider strategic games where strategy sets are linearly ordered while the preferences of the players are described by binary relations. All restrictions imposed on the preferences are satisfied in the case of epsilon-optimization of a bounded-above utility function. A Nash equilibrium exists and can be reached from any strategy profile after a finite number of best response improvements if...

In this study, we analyze the balance of quadruped walking robots. For this purpose, a simplified polygonal model of a quadruped walking configuration is considered. A boundaryrange-based balance margin is used for determining the system stability of the polygonal walking configuration considered herein. The balance margin enables the estimation of the walking configuration’s balance for effect...

The constant rate discounted utility model is commonly used to represent intertemporal preferences in health care program evaluations. This paper examines the appropriateness of this model, and argues that the model fails both normatively and descriptively as a representation of individual intertemporal preferences for health outcomes. Variable rate discounted utility models are more flexible, ...

We consider the following optimization problem for an insurance company

This paper advocates a new ML-based programming framework, called Programming by Feedback (PF), which involves a sequence of interactions between the active computer and the user. The latter only provides preference judgments on pairs of solutions supplied by the active computer. The active computer involves two components: the learning component estimates the user’s utility function and accoun...

We consider queueing systems with generally distributed abandonment times. By explicitly modeling the waiting time of the first customer in line, we obtain a natural bounded jump Markov process allowing for uniformization. This approach is useful to solve, via dynamic programming, various optimization problems where the objectives and/or constraints involve the distributions of the performance ...