Minimizing a stochastic convex function subject to stochastic constraints and some applications

Abstract

In the simplest case, we obtain a general solution to a problem of minimizing an integral of a nondecreasing right continuous stochastic process from zero to some nonnegative random variable tau, under the constraints that for some nonnegative random variable T, tau is between zero and T a.s. and the expected value of tau is some alpha. The nondecreasing process and T are allowed to be dependent. In fact a more general setup involving sigma-finite measures, rather than just probability measures is considered and some consequences for families of stochastic processes are given as special cases. Various applications are provided.