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Risk-averse dynamic pricing using mean-semivariance optimization

Rainer Schlosser and Jochen Gönsch

European Journal of Operational Research, 2023, vol. 310, issue 3, 1151-1163

Abstract: In many revenue management applications risk-averse decision-making is crucial. In dynamic settings, however, it is challenging to find the right balance between maximizing expected rewards and avoiding poor performances. In this paper, we consider time-consistent mean-semivariance (MSV) optimization for dynamic pricing problems within a discrete MDP framework, which are shown to be NP hard. We present a novel fixpoint-based dynamic programming approach to compute risk-sensitive feedback policies with Pareto-optimal combinations of mean and semivariance. We illustrate the effectiveness and the applicability of our concepts compared to state-of-the-art heuristics. For various numerical examples the results show that our approach clearly outperforms all other heuristics and obtains a performance guarantee with less then 0.2% optimality gap. Our approach is general and can be applied to MDPs beyond dynamic pricing.

Keywords: Revenue management; Risk management; Markov decision process; Mean-semivariance optimization; Dynamic pricing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:310:y:2023:i:3:p:1151-1163

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2023.04.002

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European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati

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