Positive Dynamic Programming: A Critique

Abstract

In the article Positive Dynamic Programming, David Blackwell tries to answer the question concerning the existence of optimal stationary strategies for a positive dynamic programming problem. The principal results obtained in the paper are indicative of the existence of weakly optimal stationary plans where the optimal return need not be Borel measurable. More specifically, the main theorem establishes the condition for the weakly optimal stationary plan when the optimal return is bounded. Blackwell also gives an example that demonstrates that no optimal plan exists showing that the results obtained in his earlier work on discounted dynamic programming, cannot be generally extended to the positive case.