We develop an envelope condition method (ECM) for dynamic programming problems –a tractable alternative to expensive conventional value function iteration. ECM has two novel features: First, to reduce the cost, ECM replaces expensive backward iteration on Bellman equation with relatively...

We introduce a computational technique- precomputation of integrals - that makes it possible to construct conditional expectation functions in dynamic stochastic models in the initial stage of a solution procedure. This technique is very general: it works for a broad class of approximating...

We introduce an envelope condition method (ECM) for solving dynamic programming problems. ECM iterates on the Bellman equation forward and is much faster than conventional value function methods that iterate backward. In the studied examples, ECM is comparable in accuracy and cost to Carroll's...