Probability Surveys Vol. 2 (2005) 506–549 ISSN: 1549-5787 DOI: 10.1214/154957805100000195 On some recent aspects of stochastic control and their applications∗ Huyˆen Pham† Laboratoire de Probabilit´es et Mod`eles Al´eatoires, CNRS, UMR 7599 Universit´eParis 7, e-mail:
[email protected], and CREST Abstract: This paper is a survey on some recent aspects and developments in stochastic control. We discuss the two main historical approaches, Bell- man’s optimality principle and Pontryagin’s maximum principle, and their modern exposition with viscosity solutions and backward stochastic differ- ential equations. Some original proofs are presented in a unifying context including degenerate singular control problems. We emphasize key results on characterization of optimal control for diffusion processes, with a view towards applications. Some examples in finance are detailed with their ex- plicit solutions. We also discuss numerical issues and open questions. AMS 2000 subject classifications: 93E20, 49J20, 49L20, 60H30. Keywords and phrases: Controlled diffusions, dynamic programming, maximum principle, viscosity solutions, backward stochastic differential equations, finance. Received December 2005. arXiv:math/0509711v3 [math.PR] 12 Jan 2006 ∗This is an original survey paper †I would like to thank Philip Protter for his encouragement to write this paper. 506 H. Pham/On some recent aspects of stochastic control and their applications 507 Contents 1 Introduction 508 2 Theproblemanddiscussiononmethodology 508 2.1 Problemformulation . 508 2.2 Bellman’s optimality principle . 509 2.2.1 The Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (in)equation . 511 2.2.2 Theclassicalverificationapproach . 512 2.3 Pontryagin’s maximum principle . 514 2.4 Othercontrolproblems . 515 2.4.1 Randomhorizon .