Major-Minor Mean Field Game of Stopping: An Entropy Regularization Approach

Abstract. This paper studies a discrete-time major-minor mean-field game of stopping where the major player can choose either an optimal control or a stopping time. We look for the relaxed equilibrium as a randomized stopping policy, which is formulated as a fixed point of a set-valued mapping, whose existence is challenging by direct arguments. To overcome the difficulties caused by the presence of a major player, we propose to study an auxiliary problem by considering entropy regularization in the major player’s problem while formulating the minor players’ optimal stopping problems as linear programming over occupation measures. We first show the existence of regularized equilibria as fixed points of some simplified set-valued operator using the Kakutani–Fan–Glicksberg fixed-point theorem. Next, we prove that the regularized equilibrium converges as the regularization parameter [Formula: see text] tends to 0 and the limit corresponds to a fixed point of the original operator, thereby confirming the existence of a relaxed equilibrium in the original problem. We also extend this entropy regularization method to the mean-field game problem where the minor players choose optimal controls.

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Publication Details

Journal
SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization
Published
2026-09-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1137/25m1726121
Primary Topic
Stochastic processes and financial applications
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Major-Minor Mean Field Game of Stopping: An Entropy Regularization Approach

Xiang Yu, Zhou Zhou, Jiacheng Zhang, Keyu Zhang
SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization
Stochastic processes and financial applications
article

Major-Minor Mean Field Game of Stopping: An Entropy Regularization Approach

Xiang Yu, Zhou Zhou, Jiacheng Zhang, Keyu Zhang
article en

Abstract

Abstract. This paper studies a discrete-time major-minor mean-field game of stopping where the major player can choose either an optimal control or a stopping time. We look for the relaxed equilibrium as a randomized stopping policy, which is formulated as a fixed point of a set-valued mapping, whose existence is challenging by direct arguments. To overcome the difficulties caused by the presence of a major player, we propose to study an auxiliary problem by considering entropy regularization in the major player’s problem while formulating the minor players’ optimal stopping problems as linear programming over occupation measures. We first show the existence of regularized equilibria as fixed points of some simplified set-valued operator using the Kakutani–Fan–Glicksberg fixed-point theorem. Next, we prove that the regularized equilibrium converges as the regularization parameter [Formula: see text] tends to 0 and the limit corresponds to a fixed point of the original operator, thereby confirming the existence of a relaxed equilibrium in the original problem. We also extend this entropy regularization method to the mean-field game problem where the minor players choose optimal controls.

SIAM Journal on Control and OptimizationVol. 64(5)
The University of Sydney (AU), Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HK), Chinese University of Hong Kong (HK), Tsinghua University (CN)
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Openalex Percentile: Top 99%
Stochastic processes and financial applications
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