EconBase
← All papers

Posterior and Likelihood Sensitivity in Bayesian Distributionally Robust Optimization

Jun-ya Gotoh, Andrew E. B. Lim, Michael Jong Kim

arXiv 29 May 2026 · Mathematics — Optimization

arXiv:2605.31306 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

We introduce the notion of worst-case posterior and worst-case likelihood sensitivity. These measure, respectively, the sensitivity of the expected cost to worst-case perturbations of the posterior distribution and worst-case perturbations of the likelihood of a Bayesian model. Each defines a quantitative measure of robustness. A decision maker concerned about the sensitivity of the out-of-sample expected cost to deviations from her assumptions will want a decision for which both sensitivities are small. We derive posterior and likelihood sensitivities for uncertainty sets defined in terms of deviation measures. Posterior sensitivity vanishes when the posterior variance shrinks to zero, which occurs when parameter uncertainty is eliminated from learning. Parameter learning does not eliminate likelihood sensitivity. A distributionally robust formulation of a Bayesian optimization problem makes a near-Pareto-optimal tradeoff between performance (expected cost) and robustness (posterior and likelihood sensitivity).

Citation extraction

15
references
27
in-text mentions
15
distinct cited
3
self-citations
5,552
main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 85% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Gotoh, Jun-ya and Kim, Michael Jong and Lim, Andrew E.B (2026) Robustness Measures in Distributionally Robust Optimization self1.000124100%
2Shapiro, Alexander and Zhou, Enlu and Lin, Yifan (2023) Bayesian distributionally robust optimization0.64422100%
3Duchi, John C. and Namkoong, Hongseok (2019) Variance-based regularization with convex objectives0.40511100%
4Lavine, Michael (1991) Sensitivity in Bayesian Statistics: The Prior and the Likelihood0.40511100%
5Berger, James and Berliner, L. Mark (1986) ROBUST BAYES AND EMPIRICAL BAYES ANALYSIS WITH $ $-CONTAMINATED PRIORS0.40511100%
6Bertsimas, Dimitris and Copenhaver, Martin S (2018) Characterization of the equivalence of robustification and regularization in linear and matrix regression0.40511100%
7Blanchet, Jose and Kang, Yang and Murthy, Karthyek (2019) Robust Wasserstein profile inference and applications to machine learning0.40511100%
8Esfahani, Peyman Mohajerin and Kuhn, Daniel (2018) Data-driven distributionally robust optimization using the Wasserstein metric: Performance guarantees and tractable reformulations0.40511100%
9Gao, Rui and Kleywegt, Anton (2023) Distributionally robust stochastic optimization with Wasserstein distance0.40511100%
10Gao, Rui and Chen, Xi and Kleywegt, Anton J (2024) Wasserstein distributionally robust optimization and variation regularization0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 15 scored citations.