Howard’s policy iteration(policy improvement algorithm)

 

We consider the following maximization problem

 

          subject to

 

where we assume that

 

and

 

where

 

 

for

 

We convert it into the following Bellman equation

 

 

We firstly guess the policy function as

 

   for

 

We then calculate the value of k at time t in terms of the value of k at time 0.

     for some .

 .

 .

 .

where

and

 

starting from  and  when t=1 for some .

 

We can regard it as

 

   for some .

 

The rest is almost the same as what we did yesterday.

 

That is

Thus

        that we calculate this beforehand.

 

We then consider two period problem in Bellman equation

That is

 

FOC w.r.t. k’ is

Thus

 

On the other hand, FOC w.r.t. is

 

Plugging the result of k’ above into this FOC, we get

Thus

that does not depend on technology change and its corresponding random process.

 

Plugging it back to k’, we get

or

 

That’s all in one iteration.