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Decision Making Under Uncertainty When Preference Information Is Incomplete

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin Armbruster

    (Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208)

  • Erick Delage

    (Department of Decision Sciences, HEC Montréal, Montréal, Québec H3T 2A7, Canada)

Abstract

We consider the problem of optimal decision making under uncertainty but assume that the decision maker’s utility function is not completely known. Instead, we consider all the utilities that meet some criteria, such as preferring certain lotteries over other lotteries and being risk averse, S-shaped, or prudent. These criteria extend the ones used in the first- and second-order stochastic dominance framework. We then give tractable formulations for such decision-making problems. We formulate them as robust utility maximization problems, as optimization problems with stochastic dominance constraints, and as robust certainty equivalent maximization problems. We use a portfolio allocation problem to illustrate our results. This paper was accepted by Dimitris Bertsimas, optimization.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin Armbruster & Erick Delage, 2015. "Decision Making Under Uncertainty When Preference Information Is Incomplete," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(1), pages 111-128, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:61:y:2015:i:1:p:111-128
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2014.2059
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    References listed on IDEAS

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