This paper deals with the search of optimal paths in a multi-stage stochastic decision network as a first application of the deterministic approximation approach proposed by Tadei et al. [48]. In the network, the involved utilities are stage-dependent and contain random oscillations with an...

By equal mean, two skew-symmetric families with the same kernel are quite similar, and the tails are often very close together. We use this observation to approximate the tail distribution of the skew-normal by the skew-normal-Laplace, and accordingly obtain a normal function approximation to...