Continuous time Markovian decision processes average return criterion

Continuous time Markovian decision models with countable state space are investigated. The existence of an optimal stationary policy is established for the expected average return criterion function. It is shown that the expected average return can be expressed as an expected discounted return of a related Markovian decision process. A policy iteration method is given which converges to an optimal deterministic policy, the policy so obtained is shown optimal over all Markov policies.