Bøger af Jean B. Lasserre

This book presents the first part of a planned two-volume series devoted to a systematic exposition of some recent developments in the theory of discrete-time Markov control processes (MCPs). Interest is mainly confined to MCPs with Borel state and control (or action) spaces, and possibly unbounded costs and noncompact control constraint sets. MCPs are a class of stochastic control problems, also known as Markov decision processes, controlled Markov processes, or stochastic dynamic pro- grams; sometimes, particularly when the state space is a countable set, they are also called Markov decision (or controlled Markov) chains. Regardless of the name used, MCPs appear in many fields, for example, engineering, economics, operations research, statistics, renewable and nonrenewable re- source management, (control of) epidemics, etc. However, most of the lit- erature (say, at least 90%) is concentrated on MCPs for which (a) the state space is a countable set, and/or (b) the costs-per-stage are bounded, and/or (c) the control constraint sets are compact. But curiously enough, the most widely used control model in engineering and economics--namely the LQ (Linear system/Quadratic cost) model-satisfies none of these conditions. Moreover, when dealing with "e;partially observable"e; systems) a standard approach is to transform them into equivalent "e;completely observable"e; sys- tems in a larger state space (in fact, a space of probability measures), which is uncountable even if the original state process is finite-valued.

= {~k' k = 0, 1, ... } with transition probability function (t.pJ.) P(x, B), i.e., P(x, B) := Prob (~k+1 E B I ~k = x) for each x E X, B E B, and k = 0,1, .... is said to be stable if there exists a probability measure (p.m.) /.l on B such that (*) VB EB. /.l(B) = Ix /.l(dx) P(x, B) If (*) holds then /.l is called an invariant p.m. for the Me ~.

= {~k' k = 0, 1, ... } with transition probability function (t.pJ.) P(x, B), i.e., P(x, B) := Prob (~k+1 E B I ~k = x) for each x E X, B E B, and k = 0,1, .... is said to be stable if there exists a probability measure (p.m.) /.l on B such that (*) VB EB. /.l(B) = Ix /.l(dx) P(x, B) If (*) holds then /.l is called an invariant p.m. for the Me ~.

Devoted to a systematic exposition of some recent developments in the theory of discrete-time Markov control processes, the text is mainly confined to MCPs with Borel state and control spaces.

The theory of optimization, understood in a broad sense, is the basis of modern applied mathematics, covering a large spectrum of topics from theoretical considerations (structure, stability) to applied operational research and engineering applications. The compiled material of this book puts on display this versatility, by exhibiting the three parallel and complementary components of optimization: theory, algorithms, and practical problems.The book contains an expanded version of three series of lectures delivered by the authors at the CRM in July 2009. The first part is a self-contained course on the general moment problem and its relations with semidefinite programming. The second part is dedicated to the problem of determination of Nash equilibria from an algorithmic viewpoint. The last part presents congestion models for traffic networks and develops modern optimization techniques for finding traffic equilibria based on stochastic optimization and game theory.