| Article ID: | iaor20051148 |
| Country: | Germany |
| Volume: | 99 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Start Page Number: | 297 |
| End Page Number: | 310 |
| Publication Date: | Jan 2004 |
| Journal: | Mathematical Programming |
| Authors: | Vlerk M.H. van der |
| Keywords: | programming: linear |
We consider convex approximations of the expected value function of a two-stage recourse problem. The convex approximations are obtained by perturbing the distribution of the random right-hand side vector. It is shown that the approximation is optimal for the class of problems with totally unimodular recourse matrices. For problems not in this class, the result is a convex lower bound that is strictly better than the one obtained from the LP relaxation.