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This paper studies the dynamic programming principle using the measurable selection method for stochastic control of continuous processes. The novelty of this work is to incorporate intermediate expectation constraints on the canonical…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-04-22 Yuk-Loong Chow , Xiang Yu , Chao Zhou

Equipping approximate dynamic programming (ADP) with inputconstraints has a tremendous significance. This enables ADP to be applied tothe systems with actuator limitations, which is quite common for dynamicalsystems. In a conventional…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-05-24 Xuefeng Bao , Zhi-Hong Mao , Nitin Sharma

This paper considers an optimization problem for a dynamical system whose evolution depends on a collection of binary decision variables. We develop scalable approximation algorithms with provable suboptimality bounds to provide…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-10-31 Insoon Yang , Samuel A. Burden , Ram Rajagopal , S. Shankar Sastry , Claire J. Tomlin

We prove the dynamic programming principle (DPP) in a class of problems where an agent controls a $d$-dimensional diffusive dynamics via both classical and singular controls and, moreover, is able to terminate the optimisation at a time of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-11-07 Tiziano De Angelis , Alessandro Milazzo

Reinforcement learning based adaptive/approximate dynamic programming (ADP) is a powerful technique to determine an approximate optimal controller for a dynamical system. These methods bypass the need to analytically solve the nonlinear…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-05-24 Xuefeng Bao , Zhi-Hong Mao , Nitin Sharma

This paper discusses the odds problem, proposed by Bruss in 2000, and its variants. A recurrence relation called a dynamic programming (DP) equation is used to find an optimal stopping policy of the odds problem and its variants. In 2013,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-07-29 Sachika Kurokawa , Tomomi Matsui

This paper extends the core results of discrete time infinite horizon dynamic programming to the case of state-dependent discounting. We obtain a condition on the discount factor process under which all of the standard optimality results…

General Economics · Economics 2020-10-15 John Stachurski , Junnan Zhang

The linear programming (LP) approach is, together with value iteration and policy iteration, one of the three fundamental methods to solve optimal control problems in a dynamic programming setting. Despite its simple formulation,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-10-31 Lucia Falconi , Andrea Martinelli , John Lygeros

New approaches to the theory of dynamic programming view dynamic programs as families of policy operators acting on partially ordered sets. In this paper, we extend these ideas by shifting from arbitrary partially ordered sets to ordered…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-02 Nisha Peng , John Stachurski

Markov decision problems are most commonly solved via dynamic programming. Another approach is Bellman residual minimization, which directly minimizes the squared Bellman residual objective function. However, compared to dynamic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Donghwan Lee , Hyukjun Yang

In this paper, we study backward doubly stochastic recursive optimal control problem where the cost function is described by the solution of a backward doubly stochastic differential equation. We give the dynamical programming principle for…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-08-13 Yunhong Li , Anis. Matoussi , Lifeng Wei , Zhen Wu

We consider a discrete-time, generically incomplete market model and a behavioural investor with power-like utility and distortion functions. The existence of optimal strategies in this setting has been shown in a previous paper under…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2014-06-23 Miklós Rásonyi , José G. Rodríguez-Villarreal

This paper analyzes the stability of optimal policies in the long-run stochastic control framework with an averaged risk-sensitive criterion for discrete-time MDPs on finite state-action space. In particular, we study the robustness of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-23 Nicole Bäuerle , Marcin Pitera , Łukasz Stettner

Markov Decision Problems (MDPs) provide a foundational framework for modelling sequential decision-making across diverse domains, guided by optimality criteria such as discounted and average rewards. However, these criteria have inherent…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-08-26 Dibyangshu Mukherjee , Shivaram Kalyanakrishnan

This article considers the average optimality for a continuous-time Markov decision process with Borel state and action spaces and an arbitrarily unbounded nonnegative cost rate. The existence of a deterministic stationary optimal policy is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-03-05 Yi Zhang

In this paper, we analyze dynamic programming as a novel approach to solve the problem of maximizing the profits of a bank. The mathematical model of the problem and the description of a bank's work is described in this paper. The problem…

General Finance · Quantitative Finance 2016-11-04 Oleg Malafeyev , Achal Awasthi

Although average gain optimality is a commonly adopted performance measure in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), it is often too asymptotic. Further incorporating measures of immediate losses leads to the hierarchy of bias optimalities, all…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-16 Victor Boone , Adrienne Tuynman

We study stochastic motion planning problems which involve a controlled process, with possibly discontinuous sample paths, visiting certain subsets of the state-space while avoiding others in a sequential fashion. For this purpose, we first…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-11-27 Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani , Debasish Chatterjee , John Lygeros

We study the problem of Trajectory Optimization (TO) for a general class of stiff and constrained dynamic systems. We establish a set of mild assumptions, under which we show that TO converges numerically stably to a locally optimal and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-25 Zherong Pan , Yifan Zhu

This paper studies the dynamic programming principle for general convex stochastic optimization problems introduced by Rockafellar and Wets in [30]. We extend the applicability of the theory by relaxing compactness and boundedness…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-04-01 Teemu Pennanen , Ari-Pekka Perkkiö