Sufficient conditions for infinite-horizon calculus of variations problems

Abstract

After a brief survey of the literature about sufficient conditions, we give different sufficient conditions of optimality for infinite-horizon calculus of variations problems in the general (non concave) case. Some sufficient conditions are obtained by extending to the infinite-horizon setting the techniques of extremal fields. Others are obtained in a special qcase of reduction to finite horizon. The last result uses auxiliary functions. We treat five notions of optimality. Our problems are essentially motivated by macroeconomic optimal growth models.