A Theory of First Order Mean Field Type Control Problems and their Equations

In this article, by using several new crucial it a priori estimates which are still absent in the literature, we provide a comprehensive resolution of the first order generic mean field type control problems and also establish the global-in-time classical solutions of their Bellman and master equations. Rather than developing the analytical approach via tackling the Bellman and master equation directly, we apply the maximum principle approach by considering the induced forward-backward ordinary differential equation (FBODE) system; indeed, we first show the local-in-time unique existence of the solution of the FBODE system for a variety of terminal data by Banach fixed point argument, and then provide crucial a priori estimates of bounding the sensitivity of the terminal data for the backward equation by utilizing a monotonicity condition that can be deduced from the positive definiteness of the Schur complement of the Hessian matrix of the Lagrangian in the lifted version and manipulating first order condition appropriately; this uniform bound over the whole planning horizon [0,T] allows us to partition [0,T] into a number of sub-intervals with a common small length and then glue the consecutive local-in-time solutions together to form the unique global-in-time solution of the FBODE system. The regularity of the global-in-time solution follows from that of the local ones due to the regularity assumptions on the coefficient functions. Moreover, the regularity of the value function will also be shown with the aid of the regularity of the solution couple of the FBODE system and the regularity assumptions on the coefficient functions, with which we can further deduce that this value function and its linear functional derivative satisfy the Bellman and master equations, respectively.