Mokobodzki's intervals: an approach to Dynkin games when value process is not a semimartingale

Abstract

We study Dynkin games governed by a nonlinear $\mathbb E^f$-expectation on a finite interval $[0,T]$, with payoff c\`adl\`ag processes $L,U$ of class (D) which are not imposed to satisfy (weak) Mokobodzki's condition - the existence of a c\`adl\`ag semimartingale between the barriers. For that purpose we introduce the notion of Mokobodzki's stochastic intervals $\mathscr M(\theta)$ (roughly speaking, maximal stochastic interval on which Mokobodzki's condition is satisfied when starting from the stopping time $\theta$) and the notion of reflected BSDEs without Mokobodzki's condition (this is a generalization and modification of the notion introduced by Hamad\'ene and Hassani (2005)). We prove an existence and uniqueness result for RBSDEs with driver $f$ that is non-increasing with respect to the value variable (no restrictions on the growth) and Lipschitz continuous with respect to the control variable, and with data in $L^1$ spaces. Next, by using RBSDEs, we show numerous results on Dynkin games: existence of the value process, saddle points, and convergence of the penalty scheme. We also show that the game is not played beyond $\mathscr M(\theta)$, when starting from $\theta$.