Backward stochastic differential equations have been a very successful and active tool for stochastic finance and insurance for some decades. More generally they serve as a central method in applications of control theory in many areas. We introduce BSDE by looking at a simple utility optimization problem in financial stochastics. We shall derive an important class of BSDE by applying the martingale optimality principle to solve an optimal investment problem for a financial agent whose income is partly affected by market external risk. We then present the basics of existence and uniqueness theory for solutions to BSDE the coefficients of which satisfy global Lipschitz conditions.[-]

We consider competitive capacity investment for a duopoly of two distinct producers. The producers are exposed to stochastically fluctuating costs and interact through aggregate supply. Capacity expansion is irreversible and modeled in terms of timing strategies characterized through threshold rules. Because the impact of changing costs on the producers is asymmetric, we are led to a nonzero-sum timing game describing the transitions among the discrete investment stages. Working in a continuous-time diffusion framework, we characterize and analyze the resulting Nash equilibrium and game values. Our analysis quantifies the dynamic competition effects and yields insight into dynamic preemption and over-investment in a general asymmetric setting. A case-study considering the impact of fluctuating emission costs on power producers investing in nuclear and coal-fired plants is also presented.[-]

We propose a mean field kinetic model for systems of rational agents interacting in a game theoretical framework. This model is inspired from non-cooperative anonymous games with a continuum of players and Mean-Field Games. The large time behavior of the system is given by a macroscopic closure with a Nash equilibrium serving as the local thermodynamic equilibrium. Applications of the presented theory to social and economical models will be given.[-]

Optimal vector quantization has been originally introduced in Signal processing as a discretization method of random signals, leading to an optimal trade-off between the speed of transmission and the quality of the transmitted signal. In machine learning, similar methods applied to a dataset are the historical core of unsupervised classification methods known as “clustering”. In both case it appears as an optimal way to produce a set of weighted prototypes (or codebook) which makes up a kind of skeleton of a dataset, a signal and more generally, from a mathematical point of view, of a probability distribution.
Quantization has encountered in recent years a renewed interest in various application fields like automatic classification, learning algorithms, optimal stopping and stochastic control, Backward SDEs and more generally numerical probability. In all these various applications, practical implementation of such clustering/quantization methods more or less rely on two procedures (and their countless variants): the Competitive Learning Vector Quantization $(CLV Q)$ which appears as a stochastic gradient descent derived from the so-called distortion potential and the (randomized) Lloyd's procedure (also known as k- means algorithm, nu ees dynamiques) which is but a fixed point search procedure. Batch version of those procedures can also be implemented when dealing with a dataset (or more generally a discrete distribution).
In a more formal form, if is probability distribution on an Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^d$, the optimal quantization problem at level $N$ boils down to exhibiting an $N$-tuple $(x_{1}^{*}, . . . , x_{N}^{*})$, solution to

argmin$_{(x1,\dotsb,x_N)\epsilon(\mathbb{R}^d)^N} \int_{\mathbb{R}^d 1\le i\le N} \min |x_i-\xi|^2 \mu(d\xi)$

and its distribution i.e. the weights $(\mu(C(x_{i}^{*}))_{1\le i\le N}$ where $(C(x_{i}^{*})$ is a (Borel) partition of $\mathbb{R}^d$ satisfying

$C(x_{i}^{*})\subset \lbrace\xi\epsilon\mathbb{R}^d :|x_{i}^{*} -\xi|\le_{1\le j\le N} \min |x_{j}^{*}-\xi|\rbrace$.

To produce an unsupervised classification (or clustering) of a (large) dataset $(\xi_k)_{1\le k\le n}$, one considers its empirical measure

$\mu=\frac{1}{n}\sum_{k=1}^{n}\delta_{\xi k}$

whereas in numerical probability $\mu = \mathcal{L}(X)$ where $X$ is an $\mathbb{R}^d$-valued simulatable random vector. In both situations, $CLV Q$ and Lloyd's procedures rely on massive sampling of the distribution $\mu$.
As for clustering, the classification into $N$ clusters is produced by the partition of the dataset induced by the Voronoi cells $C(x_{i}^{*}), i = 1, \dotsb, N$ of the optimal quantizer.
In this second case, which is of interest for solving non linear problems like Optimal stopping problems (variational inequalities in terms of PDEs) or Stochastic control problems (HJB equations) in medium dimensions, the idea is to produce a quantization tree optimally fitting the dynamics of (a time discretization) of the underlying structure process.
We will explore (briefly) this vast panorama with a focus on the algorithmic aspects where few theoretical results coexist with many heuristics in a burgeoning literature. We will present few simulations in two dimensions.[-]

In this talk I will present some recent developments in model-free reinforcement learning applied to large state spaces, with an emphasis on deep learning and its role in estimating action-value functions. The talk will cover a variety of model-free algorithms, including variations on Q-Learning, and some of the main techniques that make the approach practical. I will illustrate the usefulness of these methods with examples drawn from the Arcade Learning Environment, the popular set of Atari 2600 benchmark domains.[-]

We will first recall, for a general audience, the use of Monte Carlo and Multi-level Monte Carlo methods in the context of Uncertainty Quantification. Then we will discuss the recently developed Adaptive Multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) Methods for (i) It Stochastic Differential Equations, (ii) Stochastic Reaction Networks modeled by Pure Jump Markov Processes and (iii) Partial Differential Equations with random inputs. In this context, the notion of adaptivity includes several aspects such as mesh refinements based on either a priori or a posteriori error estimates, the local choice of different time stepping methods and the selection of the total number of levels and the number of samples at different levels. Our Adaptive MLMC estimator uses a hierarchy of adaptively refined, non-uniform time discretizations, and, as such, it may be considered a generalization of the uniform discretization MLMC method introduced independently by M. Giles and S. Heinrich. In particular, we show that our adaptive MLMC algorithms are asymptotically accurate and have the correct complexity with an improved control of the multiplicative constant factor in the asymptotic analysis. In this context, we developed novel techniques for estimation of parameters needed in our MLMC algorithms, such as the variance of the difference between consecutive approximations. These techniques take particular care of the deepest levels, where for efficiency reasons only few realizations are available to produce essential estimates. Moreover, we show the asymptotic normality of the statistical error in the MLMC estimator, justifying in this way our error estimate that allows prescribing both the required accuracy and confidence level in the final result. We present several examples to illustrate the above results and the corresponding computational savings.[-]

We describe and analyze the Multi-Index Monte Carlo (MIMC) and the Multi-Index Stochastic Collocation (MISC) method for computing statistics of the solution of a PDE with random data. MIMC is both a stochastic version of the combination technique introduced by Zenger, Griebel and collaborators and an extension of the Multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) method first described by Heinrich and Giles. Instead of using first-order differences as in MLMC, MIMC uses mixed differences to reduce the variance of the hierarchical differences dramatically. These mixed differences yield new and improved complexity results, which are natural generalizations of Giles's MLMC analysis, and which increase the domain of problem parameters for which we achieve the optimal convergence. On the same vein, MISC is a deterministic combination technique based on mixed differences of spatial approximations and quadratures over the space of random data. Provided enough mixed regularity, MISC can achieve better complexity than MIMC. Moreover, we show that, in the optimal case, the convergence rate of MISC is only dictated by the convergence of the deterministic solver applied to a one-dimensional spatial problem. We propose optimization procedures to select the most effective mixed differences to include in MIMC and MISC. Such optimization is a crucial step that allows us to make MIMC and MISC computationally efficient. We show the effectiveness of MIMC and MISC in some computational tests using the mimclib open source library, including PDEs with random coefficients and Stochastic Interacting Particle Systems. Finally, we will briefly discuss the use of Markovian projection for the approximation of prices in the context of American basket options.[-]

In this talk, I will introduce the classical theory of multi-armed bandits, a field at the junction of statistics, optimization, game theory and machine learning, discuss the possible applications, and highlights the new perspectives and open questions that they propose We consider competitive capacity investment for a duopoly of two distinct producers. The producers are exposed to stochastically fluctuating costs and interact through aggregate supply. Capacity expansion is irreversible and modeled in terms of timing strategies characterized through threshold rules. Because the impact of changing costs on the producers is asymmetric, we are led to a nonzero-sum timing game describing the transitions among the discrete investment stages. Working in a continuous-time diffusion framework, we characterize and analyze the resulting Nash equilibrium and game values. Our analysis quantifies the dynamic competition effects and yields insight into dynamic preemption and over-investment in a general asymmetric setting. A case-study considering the impact of fluctuating emission costs on power producers investing in nuclear and coal-fired plants is also presented.[-]