Decreasing paths of polygons

Abstract: We call a continuous path of polygons decreasing if the convex hulls of the polygons form a decreasing family of sets. For an arbitrary polygon of more than three vertices, we characterize the polygons contained in it that can be reached by a decreasing path (attainability problem), and we show that this can be done by a finite application of "pull-in" moves (bang-bang problem). In the case of triangles, this problems was investigated by Goodman, Johansen, Ramsey, and Frydman among others, in connection with the embeddability problem for non-homogeneous Markov processes.