On the convergence of policy iteration for controlled diffusions

The convergence of an approximation scheme known as policy iteration has been demonstrated for controlled diffusions by Fleming, Puterman, and Bismut. In this paper, we show that this approximation scheme is equivalent to the Newton-Kantorovich iteration for solving the optimality equation and exploit this equivalence to obtain a new proof of convergence. Estimates of the rate of convergence of this procedure are also obtained.This research was partially supported by NRC Grant No. A-3609.     

Manufacturing technology policy and deployment of processing innovations

This is a report of a study on the evolution of manufacturing technology policy during the deployment of domestic advanced manufacturing systems in thirty-four plants and two panels of data collection separated by one year. Changing firm environment was significantly correlated with pioneering product introduction business strategy (p<0.05). More importantly, it was found that manufacturing technology policy is significantly (p<0.05) associated with pioneering business strategy. Further, findings indicate that fine-tuning or modest adjustment in this policy (versus doing nothing or drastic change) was significantly (p<0.05) associated with the maximum levels of reported utilization of these new systems in a subsample of second panel, complete data cases (n=21). This curvilinear relationship between the absolute value of changes in technology policy and performance measure did not hold for the percentage of target cycle time achieved nor uptime, although results concerning performance are considered preliminary at the time of this writing. Advertising this processing technology tends to be inversely related to the radicalness of the technology incorporated into the system (p=0.076) during the deployment period tracked thus far. That is, firms installing more radical systems tend to become very cautious about sharing information about the project once installation begins.     

Optimal control of diffusion processes with reflection

In this paper, we consider the problem of optimally controlling a diffusion process on a closed bounded region ofR ⁿ with reflection at the boundary. Employing methods similar to Fleming (Ref. 1), we present a constructive proof that there exists an optimal Markov control that is measurable or lower semicontinuous. We prove further that the expected cost function corresponding to the optimal control is the unique solution of the quasilinear parabolic differential equation of dynamic programming with Neumann boundary conditions and that there exists a diffusion process (in the sense of Stroock and Varadhan) corresponding to the optimal control.This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation, Grant No. GK-18339, by the Office of Naval Research, Grant No. NR-042-264, and by the National Research Council of Canada, Grant No. A3609.The author would like to thank S. R. Pliska, J. Pisa, and N. Trudinger for helpful suggestions. He is especially grateful to Professor A. F. Veinott, Jr., for help and advice in the preparation of the doctoral dissertation, on which part of this paper is based. Finally, he wishes to thank one of the referees for the careful reading and constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

$${\cal K}$$-Convexity1 in $$\Re^{n}$$

We generalize the concept of K-convexity to an n-dimensional Euclidean space. The resulting concept of -convexity is useful in addressing production and inventory problems where there are individual product setup costs and/or joint setup costs. We derive some basic properties of -convex functions. We conclude the paper with some suggestions for future research. Support from Columbia University and University of Texas at Dallas is gratefully acknowledged. Helpful comments from Qi Feng are appreciated.     

Simple plant location under uniform delivered pricing

Given a geographical system of demand functions, the simple-plant location problem under uniform delivered pricing consists in determining the delivered price taken as uniform for all customers, the number, the locations, the sizes and the market areas of the plants which supply these customers, in order to maximize the profit of the firm. A model is proposed, which allows, moreover, to integrate some aspects of the commercial policy of the firm, i.e., its decision to satisfy all markets with positive demands or profitable markets only, or to allow a maximum unit loss or require a minimum unit gain on each served market. An efficient algorithm is presented and illustrated by an example. Computational results with a code using recursively Erlenkotter's DUALOC program as a subroutine are summarized.     

Political aspects of environmental policy

To the economist, many environmental problems are really allocation problems which can be solved by means of market prices that should approximate the shadow prices of environmental restrictions. Why is it so difficult to implement the corresponding institutional arrangements politically?     

Risk-sensitive finite-horizon piecewise deterministic Markov decision processes

This paper deals with risk-sensitive piecewise deterministic Markov decision processes, where the expected exponential utility of a finite-horizon reward is to be maximized. Both the transition rates and reward functions are allowed to be unbounded. Feynman–Kac’s formula is developed in our setup, using which along with an approximation technique, we establish the associated Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation and the existence of risk-sensitive optimal policies under suitable conditions.     

Dynamic repositioning for vehicle sharing with setup costs

This study considers a multi-period two-region repositioning problem with setup repositioning costs involved for vehicle sharing systems. We find that incorporating such costs can influence the total cost significantly and complicate the structure of the optimal policy. Moreover, we manage to partially characterize the optimal policy, and then develop an easy-to-implement heuristic policy. The performance of the heuristic policy and the influence of setup repositioning costs on policies are assessed numerically.     

企业雇佣下残疾人就业行为研究——基于就业促进政策的演化博弈分析

融合就业是残疾人可持续发展的关键途径。基于演化博弈理论和残疾人就业促进政策,建立残疾人与用人单位(企业)行为交互过程的动态演化模型,用数值实验展示了初始条件改变和决策变量不同取值对系统演化结果的影响。研究发现,残疾人就业行为路径演化系统收敛于良好状态和“锁定”状态两种模式;调控模型中的参数收敛于不同模式的概率发生显著变化或变化不明显,揭示了现实中残疾人就业治理效果不理想的深层次原因;通过提高残疾人的工资待遇、心理收益、为企业创造的价值,减少残疾人的社会补助与就业付出的人力和社会资本,增加残疾人就业法定比例、企业雇佣残疾人的声誉收益、增值税退税优惠(企业符合退税条件)与雇佣残疾人数量,减少企业支持残疾人的就业投入等均能使系统演化到良好状态的概率增加。这为制定灵活有效的残疾人就业制度、政策与措施提供了较大的操作空间,多元主体协同治理,利益共享,良性互动,以跳出不良“锁定”状态,实现残疾人就业行为良序发展,破解就业难题。