Reflecting-boundary strategy for unbounded harvesting

Consider the population process with unbounded harvesting governed by

dX~(t)=X~(t)(μκX~(t))dt+σX~(t)dB(t)dZt,d\tilde X(t)=\tilde X(t)(\mu-\kappa\tilde X(t))\,dt+\sigma\tilde X(t)\,dB(t)-dZ_t,

where (Zt)t0(Z_t)_{t\geq0} is a non-negative, increasing, right-continuous process adapted to (Ft)t0(\mathcal{F}_t)_{t\geq0}. Assume that the population survives without harvesting, namely μσ22>0\mu-\frac{\sigma^2}{2}>0. Reflecting-boundary conjecture. The optimal extraction strategy (Zt)t0(Z_t^*)_{t\geq0} has the form

Zt(x)={(xx)+if t=0,L(t,x)if t>0,Z_t^*(x)=\begin{cases}(x-x^*)^+ & \text{if }t=0,\\ L(t,x^*) & \text{if }t>0, \end{cases}

for some x(0,)x^*\in(0,\infty), where L(t,x)L(t,x^*) is the local time at xx^* of the process X~\tilde X. This conjecture extends the bounded-rate bang-bang result to unbounded harvesting: after an initial removal above the threshold, harvesting is represented by local time at a reflecting boundary. The source presents this as a conjectured optimal solution and does not provide a proof.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Alexandru Hening, Dang H. Nguyen, Sergiu C. Ungureanu and Tak Kwong Wong, “Asymptotic harvesting of populations in random environments”, arXiv:1710.01221 (2018).

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