The optimal value of Markov stopping problems with one-step look ahead policy

This paper treats stopping problems on Markov chains in which the OLA (one-step look ahead) policy is optimal. Its associated optimal value can be explicitly expressed by a potential for a charge function of the difference between the immediate reward and the one-step-after reward. As an application to the best choice problem, we shall obtain the value of three problems: the classical secretary problem, a problem with a refusal probability and a problem with a random number of objects.