In this note, we show that the least fixed point of the Bellman operator in a certain set can be computed by value iteration whether or not the fixed point is the value function. As an application, we show one of the main results of Kamihigashi (2014, "Elementary results on solutions to the...

We consider infinite-horizon deterministic dynamic programming problems in discrete time. We show that the value function is always a fixed point of a modified version of the Bellman operator. We also show that value iteration monotonically converges to the value function if the initial function...

In both estimation and calibration studies, the notion of ergodicity plays a fundamental role, permitting time series averages to be regarded as approximations to population means. As it turns out, many economic models routinely used for quantitative modeling do not satisfy the classical...

The stochastic dominance ordering over probability distributions is one of the most familiar concepts in economic and financial analysis. One difficulty with stochastic dominance is that many distributions are not ranked at all, even when arbitrarily close to other distributions that are....

In this paper we show that multiple interior steady states are pos- sible in the Ramsey model with elastic labor supply. In particular we establish the following three results: (i) for any discount factor and production function, there is a utility function such that a continuum of interior...