Applications of weak transport theory

Abstract: Motivated by applications to geometric inequalities, Gozlan, Roberto, Samson, and Tetali introduced a transport problem for `weak' cost functionals. Basic results of optimal transport theory can be extended to this setup in remarkable generality. In this article we collect several problems from different areas that can be recast in the framework of weak transport theory, namely: the Schr\"odinger problem, the Brenier-Strassen theorem, optimal mechanism design, linear transfers and semimartingale transport. Our viewpoint yields a unified approach and often allows to strengthen the original results.