A divide and conquer algorithm for exploiting policy function monotonicity is proposed and analyzed. To solve a discrete problem with n states and n choices, the algorithm requires at most n log2(n) 5n objective function evaluations. In contrast, existing methods for non-concave problems require...

A divide and conquer algorithm for exploiting policy function monotonicity is proposed and analyzed. To solve a discrete problem with n states and n choices, the algorithm requires at most nlog2(n)+5n objective function evaluations. In contrast, existing methods for nonconcave problems require...

The paper develops a version of Pontryagin's maximum principle for optimal control problems with monotonicity constraints on control variables. Whereas the literature handles such constraints by imposing an assumption of piecewise smoothness on the control variable and treating the slope of this...