EM Algorithm and Stochastic Control in Economics

Steven Kou, Xianhua Peng and Xingbo Xu

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Generalising the idea of the classical EM algorithm that is widely used for computing maximum likelihood estimates, we propose an EM-Control (EM-C) algorithm for solving multi-period finite time horizon stochastic control problems. The new algorithm sequentially updates the control policies in each time period using Monte Carlo simulation in a forward-backward manner; in other words, the algorithm goes forward in simulation and backward in optimization in each iteration. Similar to the EM algorithm, the EM-C algorithm has the monotonicity of performance improvement in each iteration, leading to good convergence properties. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm by solving stochastic control problems in the monopoly pricing of perishable assets and in the study of real business cycle.

Date: 2016-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.01767 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:1611.01767

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().