On optimal harvesting problems in random environments

This paper investigates the optimal harvesting strategy for a single species living in random environments whose population growth is given by a regime-switching diffusion. Harvesting acts as a (stochastic) control on the size of the population. The objective is to find a harvesting strategy which maximizes the expected total discounted income from harvesting up to the time of extinction of the species; the income rate is allowed to be state- and environment-dependent. This is a singular stochastic control problem, with both the extinction time and the optimal harvesting policy depending on the initial condition. One aspect of receiving payments up to the random time of extinction is that small changes in the initial population size may significantly alter the extinction time when using the same harvesting policy. Consequently, one no longer obtains continuity of the value function using standard arguments for either regular or singular control problems having a fixed time horizon. This paper introduces a new sufficient condition under which the continuity of the value function for the regime-switching model is established. Further, it is shown that the value function is a viscosity solution of a coupled system of quasi-variational inequalities. The paper also establishes a verification theorem and, based on this theorem, an e-optimal harvesting strategy is constructed under certain conditions on the model. Two examples are analyzed in detail. © 2011 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.