Exponential hedging and entropic penalties

We solve the problem of hedging a contingent claim :B by maximizing the expected exponential utility of terminal net wealth for a locally bounded semimartingale X. We prove a duality relation between this problem and a dual problem for local martingale measures Q for X where we either minimize relative entropy minus a correction term involving B or maximize the Q-price of B subject to an entropic penalty term. Our result is robust in the sense that it holds for several choices of the space of hedging strategies. Applications include a new characterization of the minimal martingale measure and risk-averse asymptotics.