The Turnpike Troupidoors

This book is devoted to the study of a class of optimal control problems arising in mathematical economics, related to the Robinson–Solow–Srinivasan (RSS) model. It will be useful for researches interested in the turnpike theory, infinite horizon optimal control and their applications, and mathematical economists.

This book is devoted to the recent progress on the turnpike theory. The turnpike property was discovered by Paul A. Samuelson, who applied it to problems in mathematical economics in 1949. These properties were studied for optimal trajectories of models of economic dynamics determined by convex processes. In this monograph the author, a leading expert in modern turnpike theory, presents a number of results concerning the turnpike properties in the calculus of variations and optimal control which were obtained in the last ten years. These results show that the turnpike properties form a general phenomenon which holds for various classes of variational problems and optimal control problems. The book should help to correct the misapprehension that turnpike properties are only special features of some narrow classes of convex problems of mathematical economics.

This book provides a comprehensive study of turnpike phenomenon arising in optimal control theory. The focus is on individual (non-generic) turnpike results which are both mathematically significant and have numerous applications in engineering and economic theory. All results obtained in the book are new. New approaches, techniques, and methods are rigorously presented and utilize research from finite-dimensional variational problems and discrete-time optimal control problems to find the necessary conditions for the turnpike phenomenon in infinite dimensional spaces.