Block-successive approximation for a discounted Markov decision model (Q2265958)

We suggest a new successive approximation method to compute the optimal discounted reward for finite state and action, discrete time, discounted Markov decision chains. The method is based on a block partitioning of the (stochastic) matrices corresponding to the stationary policies. The method is particularly attractive when the transition matrices are jointly nearly decomposable or nearly completely decomposable.