Dynamic Programming for Value-at-Risk Markov Decision Processes in Continuous Spaces

Xian Chen, Erick Delage and Weikai Wang

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Abstract: Value-at-Risk (VaR) is a widely adopted quantile-based risk measure in practice, yet incorporating VaR objectives into Markov decision processes (VaR MDPs) remains a longstanding challenge. Recent work has derived dynamic programming equations for VaR MDPs in finite state and action spaces but left the case of more general spaces unresolved. This paper establishes, for the first time, the validity of these equations in continuous spaces, for both finite- and infinite-horizon settings. Such cases naturally arise in many real-world dynamic decision-making problems. As an application, we study an optimal execution problem with a VaR objective and demonstrate that our framework enables the characterization of optimal dynamic strategies, resolving an open question in the field.

Date: 2026-10, Revised 2026-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-rmg
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