Worst-case values of target semi-variances with applications to robust portfolio selection

Jun Cai, Zhanyi Jiao and Tiantian Mao

European Journal of Operational Research, 2025, vol. 327, issue 3, 905-921

Abstract: The expected regret and target semi-variance are two of the most important risk measures for downside risk. When the distribution of a loss is uncertain, and only partial information of the loss is known, their worst-case values play important roles in robust risk management for finance, insurance, and many other fields. Jagannathan (1977) derived the worst-case expected regrets when only the mean and variance of a loss are known and the loss is arbitrary, symmetric, or non-negative. While Chen et al. (2011) obtained the worst-case target semi-variances under similar conditions but focusing on arbitrary losses. In this paper, we first complement the study of Chen et al. (2011) on the worst-case target semi-variances and derive the closed-form expressions for the worst-case target semi-variance when only the mean and variance of a loss are known and the loss is symmetric or non-negative. Then, we investigate worst-case target semi-variances over uncertainty sets that represent undesirable scenarios faced by an investor. Our methods for deriving these worst-case values are different from those used in Jagannathan (1977) and Chen et al. (2011). As applications of the results derived in this paper, we propose robust portfolio selection methods that minimize the worst-case target semi-variance of a portfolio loss over different uncertainty sets. To explore the insights of our robust portfolio selection methods, we conduct numerical experiments with real financial data and compare our portfolio selection methods with several portfolio selection models related to the models proposed in this paper.

Keywords: Downside risk; Target semi-variance; Worst-case risk measure; Distribution uncertainty; Distributionally robust optimization; Robust portfolio selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:327:y:2025:i:3:p:905-921

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2025.07.057

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