We study the existence of positive solutions of the integral equation $$x\left(t\right)=\mu {\int }_0^{1}k(t,s)f(s,x\left(s\right),x^{\text{'}}\left(s\right),...,x^{(n-1)}\left(s\right))ds,n\ge 2$$ in both $C^{n-1}[0,1]$ and $W^{n-1,p}[0,1]$ spaces, where $p\ge 1$ and $\mu >0$. Throughout this paper $k$ is nonnegative but the nonlinearity $f$ may take negative values. The Krasnosielski fixed point theorem on cone is used.

We are interested in the optimality of monotonicity criteria for the period function of some planar Hamiltonian systems. This study is illustrated by examples.