Abstract

The paper deals with optimal control of heterogeneous systems, that is, families of controlled ODEs parameterized by a parameter running over a domain called domain of heterogeneity. The main novelty in the paper is that the domain of heterogeneity is endogenous: it may depend on the control and on the state of the system. This extension is crucial for several economic applications and turns out to rise interesting mathematical problems. A necessary optimality condition is derived, where one of the adjoint variables satisfies a differential inclusion (instead of equation) and the maximization of the Hamiltonian takes the form of “min-max”. As a consequence, a Pontryagin-type maximum principle is obtained under certain regularity conditions for the optimal control. A formula for the derivative of the objective function with respect to the control from L is presented together with a sufficient condition for its existence. A stylized economic example is investigated analytically and numerically.

Keywords  Optimal control – Distributed control – Heterogeneous systems – Endogenous domain of heterogeneity – Pontryagin-type maximum principle – Set-valued analysis

Communicating Editor: Frederic Bonnans.
This research was financed by Wiener Wissenschafts-, Forschungs- und Technologiefonds (WWTF) under grant No. MA07-002 and by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) under grant No. I 476-N13.

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