We establish some elementary results on solutions to the Bellman equation without introducing any topological assumption. Under a small number of conditions, we show that the Bellman equation has a unique solution in a certain set, that this solution is the value function, and that the value...

Ekeland and Scheinkman (1986) prove the necessity of a standard transversality condition under certain technical conditions. Their result is one of the most powerful on the necessity of a transversality condition currently available in the literature, and their proof involves numerous...

This note provides a simple proof of the necessity of the transversality condition for the differentiable reduced-form model. The proof uses only an elementary perturbation argument without relying on dynamic programming. The proof makes it clear that, contrary to common belief, the necessity of...

We study a simple infinite horizon model with indivisible labor. We characterize the optimal plans under the assumptions that $\beta R = 1$ and that $1/2 \leq \beta 1$, where R is the gross interest rate and $\beta$ is the discount factor. We show that under those assumptions, optimal plans are...

This paper studies conditions under which the price of an asset is uniquely determined by its fundamental value - i.e., no bubbles can arise - in Lucas-type asset pricing models with unbounded utility. After discussing Gilles and LeRoy's (1992) example, we construct an example of a two-period,...