Optimal Stopping of Stochastic Transport Minimizing Submartingale Costs

Abstract: Given a stochastic state process $(X_t)t$ and a real-valued submartingale cost process $(S_t)_t$, we characterize optimal stopping times $\tau$ that minimize the expectation of $S\tau$ while realizing given initial and target distributions $\mu$ and $\nu$, i.e., $X_0\sim \mu$ and $X_\tau \sim \nu$. A dual optimization problem is considered and shown to be attained under suitable conditions. The optimal solution of the dual problem then provides a contact set, which characterizes the location where optimal stopping can occur. The optimal stopping time is uniquely determined as the first hitting time of this contact set provided we assume a natural structural assumption on the pair $(X_t, S_t)_t$, which generalizes the twist condition on the cost in optimal transport theory. This paper extends the Brownian motion settings studied in [15, 16] and deals with more general costs.