Deadlock-freeness-an informational characterization

Necessary and sufficient conditions for ensuring that a generic stochastic system, represented within the framework of Witsenhausen´s intrinsic model, is deadlock-free are introduced. These conditions are shown to ensure that an expected payoff can be defined for every control policy and, consequently, that well-posed control problems can be formulated. The conditions subsume Witsenhausen´s causality conditions and differ from other conditions developed within the computer science and control communities in that they are informational (knowledge-based) as opposed to logical or temporal