English

Numerical Approximation for Path-Dependent McKean-Vlasov Control with Non-Asymptotic Error Estimates

Optimization and Control 2026-06-25 v1 Numerical Analysis

Abstract

Path-dependent McKean--Vlasov (MKV) control models large interacting populations with history-dependent dynamics and costs. This paper develops a unified approximation-and-learning framework for continuous time path-dependent MKV problem under open-loop controls. First, an Euler discretization scheme with piecewise-constant controls is shown to achieve a non-asymptotic error of O(h1/4)O(h^{1/4}). Second, we establish a discrete dynamic programming principle and prove value equivalence between open-loop and history-dependent feedback controls, enabling optimization on a reduced filtration. Third, an interacting particle system is introduced to approximate the continuous-time value, yielding an overall error bound of O(h1/4)+O(Mγ)O(h^{1/4}) + O(M^{-\gamma}) for MM particles and an explicitly given γ>0\gamma > 0. Finally, we propose a fully implementable neural-network policy-gradient method using pathwise features. Numerical experiments, including a path-dependent linear-quadratic benchmark, demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2606.27181,
  title  = {Numerical Approximation for Path-Dependent McKean-Vlasov Control with Non-Asymptotic Error Estimates},
  author = {Olivier Bokanowski and Jean-Francois Chassagneux and Xinyu Li and Christoph Reisinger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.27181},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-22T20:10:45.987Z