arXiv subjects

Benoît Tran

Publications and source records attributed to Benoît Tran.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Stability of Two-Stage Stochastic Programs Under Problem-Dependent Costs

Classical stability theory for stochastic programming relies on the Wasserstein-Fortet-Mourier duality, which requires the ground cost to be a distance. When using problem-dependent costs instead of metrics, this duality no longer yields Fortet-Mourier bounds. This paper develops a direct stability approach using the primal optimal transport formulation. We prove that under minimal regularity conditions and a regret domination property, the optimal value function remains Lipschitz continuous with respect to problem-dependent transport costs. Our approach works directly with transport couplings rather than relying on dual representations to establish stability bounds. We present two applications: (1) For linear programs with continuous second-stage, we show that regret domination holds with constants depending on dual bounds and Lipschitz properties, using sensitivity analysis. (2) For mixed-integer second-stage problems, we show that combinatorial structure can be exploited to obtain tight regret bounds. We analyze several examples as illustrations. These results provide theoretical justification for problem-dependent scenario reduction approaches and enable their application to both continuous and discrete stochastic programs.

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arXiv2021

Entropic Regularization of the Nested Distance

In 2012, Pflug and Pichler proved, under regularity assumptions, that the value function in Multistage Stochastic Programming (MSP) is Lipschitz continuous w.r.t. the Nested Distance, which is a distance between scenario trees (or discrete time stochastic processes with finite support). The Nested Distance is a refinement of the Wasserstein distance to account for proximity of the filtrations of discrete time stochastic processes. The computation of the Nested Distance between two scenario trees amounts to the computation of an exponential (in the horizon $T$) number of optimal transport problems between smaller conditional probabilities of size $n$, where $n$ is less than maximal number of children of each node. Such optimal transport problems can be solved by the auction algorithm with complexity $O(n^3\log(n))$. In 2013, Cuturi introduced Sinkhorn's algorithm, an alternating projection scheme which solves an entropic regularized optimal transport problem. Sinkhorn's algorithm converges linearly and each iteration has a complexity of $O(n^2)$. In this article, we present and test numerically an entropic regularization of the Nested Distance.

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arXiv2021

Minimization Interchange Theorem on Posets

Interchange theorems between minimization and integration are useful in optimization, especially in optimal control and in stochastic optimization. In this article, we establish a generalized minimization interchange theorem, where integration is replaced by a monotone mapping between posets (partially ordered sets). As an application, we recover, and slightly extend, classical results from the literature, and we tackle the case of the Choquet integral. Our result provides insight on the mechanisms behind existing interchange results.

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arXiv2020

Tropical Dynamic Programming for Lipschitz Multistage Stochastic Programming

We present an algorithm called Tropical Dynamic Programming (TDP) which builds upper and lower approximations of the Bellman value functions in risk-neutral Multistage Stochastic Programming (MSP), with independent noises of finite supports. To tackle the curse of dimensionality, popular parametric variants of Approximate Dynamic Programming approximate the Bellman value function as linear combinations of basis functions. Here, Tropical Dynamic Programming builds upper (resp. lower) approximations of a given value function as min-plus linear (resp. max-plus linear) combinations of "basic functions". At each iteration, TDP adds a new basic function to the current combination following a deterministic criterion introduced by Baucke, Downward and Zackeri in 2018 for a variant of Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming. We prove, for every Lipschitz MSP, the asymptotic convergence of the generated approximating functions of TDP to the Bellman value functions on sets of interest. We illustrate this result on MSP with linear dynamics and polyhedral costs.

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arXiv2020

A stochastic algorithm for deterministic multistage optimization problems

Several attempts to dampen the curse of dimensionnality problem of the Dynamic Programming approach for solving multistage optimization problems have been investigated. One popular way to address this issue is the Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming method (SDDP) introduced by Perreira and Pinto in 1991 for Markov Decision Processes. Assuming that the value function is convex (for a minimization problem), one builds a non-decreasing sequence of lower (or outer) convex approximations of the value function. Those convex approximations are constructed as a supremum of affine cuts. On continuous time deterministic optimal control problems, assuming that the value function is semiconvex, Zheng Qu, inspired by the work of McEneaney, introduced in 2013 a stochastic max-plus scheme that builds upper (or inner) non-increasing approximations of the value function. In this note, we build a common framework for both the SDDP and a discrete time version of Zheng Qu's algorithm to solve deterministic multistage optimization problems. Our algorithm generates monotone approximations of the value functions as a pointwise supremum, or infimum, of basic (affine or quadratic for example) functions which are randomly selected. We give sufficient conditions on the way basic functions are selected in order to ensure almost sure convergence of the approximations to the value function on a set of interest.

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