Paper Detail

Robust Risk Under Evolving Uncertainty: A Wasserstein Counterpart of the Entropic Value-at-Risk

Deep Kumar Ganguly, Jan Křetínský

arxiv Score 5.8

Published 2026-08-19 · First seen 2026-08-20

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Abstract

An agent still learning its environment should be cautious while ignorant and bold once confident. The entropic value-at-risk captures this through a robust-optimization identity---a confidence level fixes the radius of a relative-entropy ball of alternative models---but that ball cannot reach catastrophes the nominal deems impossible, precisely what a safe agent must hedge. We instead use an optimal-transport ball and study the coherent risk measure it induces, the Wasserstein entropic value-at-risk. It has a variational dual mirroring the entropic formula (an inverse temperature becomes a transport price), occupies a definite place in the risk hierarchy, and provably accounts for the reachable catastrophes the entropic measure ignores; we verify both dualities numerically. Driving the transport radius by belief entropy then yields a closed-form robust dynamic-programming operator whose caution contracts as the belief sharpens, with a certified safety sandwich and a sharp safety switch.

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BibTeX

@article{ganguly2026robust,
  title = {Robust Risk Under Evolving Uncertainty: A Wasserstein Counterpart of the Entropic Value-at-Risk},
  author = {Deep Kumar Ganguly and Jan Křetínský},
  year = {2026},
  abstract = {An agent still learning its environment should be cautious while ignorant and bold once confident. The entropic value-at-risk captures this through a robust-optimization identity---a confidence level fixes the radius of a relative-entropy ball of alternative models---but that ball cannot reach catastrophes the nominal deems impossible, precisely what a safe agent must hedge. We instead use an optimal-transport ball and study the coherent risk measure it induces, the Wasserstein entropic value-at},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19073},
  keywords = {cs.AI, cs.LG, stat.ML},
  eprint = {2608.19073},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
}

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