Efficiency of the Stochastic Approximation Method
Equivalent cost functionals and stochastic linear quadratic optimal control problems
This paper is concerned with the stochastic linear quadratic optimal control problems (LQ problems, for short) for which the coefficients are allowed to be random and the cost functionals are allowed to have negative weights on the square of control variables. We propose a new method, the equivalent cost functional method, to deal with the LQ problems. Comparing to the classical methods, the new method is simple, flexible and non-abstract. The new method can also be applied to deal with nonlinear...
Explicit formulae of distributions and densities of characteristics of a dynamic advertising and pricing model
We analyze the optimal sales process of a stochastic advertising and pricing model with constant demand elasticities. We derive explicit formulae of the densities of the (optimal) sales times and (optimal) prices when a fixed finite number of units of a product are to be sold during a finite sales period or an infinite one. Furthermore, for any time t the exact distribution of the inventory, i.e. the number of unsold items, at t is determined and will be expressed in terms of elementary functions....