Vol. 93, No. 1, 1981

Recent Issues
Vol. 325: 1
Vol. 324: 1  2
Vol. 323: 1  2
Vol. 322: 1  2
Vol. 321: 1  2
Vol. 320: 1  2
Vol. 319: 1  2
Vol. 318: 1  2
Online Archive
Volume:
Issue:
     
The Journal
Subscriptions
Editorial Board
Officers
Contacts
 
Submission Guidelines
Submission Form
Policies for Authors
 
ISSN: 1945-5844 (e-only)
ISSN: 0030-8730 (print)
Special Issues
Author Index
To Appear
 
Other MSP Journals
Sequential testing of several simple hypotheses for a diffusion process and the corresponding free boundary problem

Luis A. Caffarelli and Avner Friedman

Vol. 93 (1981), No. 1, 49–94
Abstract

An n-dimensional stochastic process ξ(t) is observed. It is known that ξ(t) has the statistics of an n-dimensional Brownian motion with any one of possibly n + 1 drifts λ0,n (λi are given n-vectors). We observe the process at a running cost, per unit time, given by ci when the drift is λi, and after some (stopping) time τ make a decision which hypothesis to accept; the hypothesis Hj means accepting the drift λj; the drift changes in time in accordance with a Markov process with n + 1 states and a given transition probability matrix. The problem of finding the optimal stopping time and optimal final decision leads to a variational inequality for a degenerate elliptic operator. In this paper we study this variational inequality and the corresponding free boundary. We also consider, by purely probabilistic methods, the case where ξ(t) is k-dimensional, kn. The outline of the main results is given at the end of §2.

Mathematical Subject Classification 2000
Primary: 60J60
Secondary: 62L10
Milestones
Received: 12 July 1979
Revised: 2 November 1979
Published: 1 March 1981
Authors
Luis A. Caffarelli
Department of Mathematics
University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station C1200
Austin TX 78712-0257
United States
http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/caffarel/
Avner Friedman