Suppose we have an optimization problem of the form $\max_{A,p}f(A)^T p$ s.t. $Ap=c$ $\sum_{i=1}^n p_i = 1$ Where $A \in \mathbb{R}^{n\times n}$, $p \in \mathbb{R}^n$, and $f(A) : \mathbb{R}^{n\times n} \mapsto \mathbb{R}^n$ and is linear. As stated, this appears to be a Quadratically Constrained Quadratic Program. But for an assignment of $A,p$ to be feasible, $A$ must be full rank to have a paired $p$ satisfying the constraint. So it seems unnecessary to optimize over both $A$ and $p$ when a feasible assignment of $A$ determins a single feasible assignment to $p$. What I'm wondering is whether there is anything to be gained by reformulating the problem to eliminate $p$, something like $\max_{A \in \{\text{full} \; \text{rank} \;nxn \; \text{matrices}\}} f(A)A^{-1}c$ s.t. $\sum_{i=1}^n (A^{-1}c)_i = 1$ What problem class does the latter formulation belong to, and does the transformation admit a more efficient solution? I'm new to optimization, so please excuse my ignorance on the subject.