Article ID: | iaor1997338 |
Country: | Netherlands |
Volume: | 69 |
Issue: | 2 |
Start Page Number: | 265 |
End Page Number: | 276 |
Publication Date: | Sep 1993 |
Journal: | European Journal of Operational Research |
Authors: | Chung Kun-Jen |
In the steady state of an undiscounted Markov decision process, the paper considers the problem of finding an optimal stationary probability distribution that minimizes the variance of the reward in a transition among the stationary probability distributions which give a mean not less than a specified value. The problem consists of a mathematical program with linear constraints and a non-linear objective. The solution technique replaces the non-linear part of the objective with a constant, inserts the constant as a constraint, and then parametrically analyzes the resulting linear program. Three numerical examples are discussed.