| Article ID: | iaor20113746 |
| Volume: | 73 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Start Page Number: | 159 |
| End Page Number: | 187 |
| Publication Date: | Apr 2011 |
| Journal: | Mathematical Methods of Operations Research |
| Authors: | Zhang Yi, Piunovskiy Alexey |
| Keywords: | programming: dynamic, markov processes |
We consider the fluid model of a controlled birth‐and‐death process with an absorbing state. Instead of analyzing the trajectories, we investigate the performance functionals of the underlying process by considering algebraic equations of the dynamic programming type. We provide the accuracy of such fluid approximations and give illustrative examples.