Solving Singular Control from Optimal Switching

This report summarizes some of our recent work (Guo and Tomecek, SIAM J Control Optim 47(1):421–443, 2008; A class of singular control problems and smooth fit principle, 2008) on a new theoretical connection between singular control of finite variation and optimal switching problems. This correspondence not only provides a novel method for analyzing multi-dimensional singular control problems, but also builds links among singular controls, Dynkin games, and sequential optimal stopping problems.