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It is well known that reinforcement learning can be cast as inference in an appropriate probabilistic model. However, this commonly involves introducing a distribution over agent trajectories with probabilities proportional to exponentiated…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-10-07 David Tolpin , Tomer Dobkin

We introduce penalty-function-based admission control policies to approximately maximize the expected reward rate in a loss network. These control policies are easy to implement and perform well both in the transient period as well as in…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Garud Iyengar , Karl Sigman

We consider a version of the ultimatum game which simultaneously combines reactive and Darwinian aspects with offers in [0,1]. By reactive aspects, we consider the effects that lead the player to change their offer given the previous…

Physics and Society · Physics 2019-10-02 Roberto da Silva , Pablo Valverde , Luis C. Lamb

For every sports tournament, it is an important requirement to provide contestants with the appropriate incentives to perform. However, incentive compatibility is usually considered an all or nothing (binary) concept in the academic…

Physics and Society · Physics 2022-05-26 László Csató

We study the problem of resilient strategies in the presence of uncertainty. Resilient strategies enable an agent to make decisions that are robust against disturbances. In particular, we are interested in those disturbances that are able…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-02 Kush Grover , Markel Zubia , Debraj Chakraborty , Muqsit Azeem , Nils Jansen , Jan Kretinsky

We consider the multi-armed bandit setting with a twist. Rather than having just one decision maker deciding which arm to pull in each round, we have $n$ different decision makers (agents). In the simple stochastic setting, we show that a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-07 Christopher Jung , Sampath Kannan , Neil Lutz

Games are challenging for Reinforcement Learning~(RL) agents due to their reward-sparsity, as rewards are only obtainable after long sequences of deliberate actions. Intrinsic Motivation~(IM) methods -- which introduce exploration rewards…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-07-29 Leonardo Villalobos-Arias , Grant Forbes , Jianxun Wang , David L Roberts , Arnav Jhala

A speculative agent with Prospect Theory preference chooses the optimal time to purchase and then to sell an indivisible risky asset to maximize the expected utility of the round-trip profit net of transaction costs. The optimization…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2022-10-26 Alex S. L. Tse , Harry Zheng

Game-theoretic analyses of distributed and peer-to-peer systems typically use the Nash equilibrium solution concept, but this explicitly excludes the possibility of strategic behavior involving more than one agent. We examine the effects of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-05-13 Ian A. Kash , Eric J. Friedman , Joseph Y. Halpern

Probabilistic properties of tennis scoring systems are examined and compared with best-of-K systems. A model, where each player has his/her own probability of winning his/her service point and which remains invariant for the duration of the…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-03-04 Edsel A. Pena , Dip Das , Yuexuan Wu

Tournaments are a widely used mechanism to rank alternatives in a noisy environment. This paper investigates a fundamental issue of economics in tournament design: what is the best usage of limited resources, that is, how should the…

Applications · Statistics 2022-05-24 Balázs R. Sziklai , Péter Biró , László Csató

In a multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem a gambler needs to choose at each round of play one of K arms, each characterized by an unknown reward distribution. Reward realizations are only observed when an arm is selected, and the gambler's…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-11 Omar Besbes , Yonatan Gur , Assaf Zeevi

Developing efficient sequential bidding strategies for repeated auctions is an important practical challenge in various marketing tasks. In this setting, the bidding agent obtains information, on both the value of the item at sale and the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-01 Juliette Achddou , Olivier Cappé , Aurélien Garivier

We introduce an evolutionary game with feedback between perception and reality, which we call the reality game. It is a game of chance in which the probabilities for different objective outcomes (e.g., heads or tails in a coin toss) depend…

General Finance · Quantitative Finance 2009-02-09 Dmitriy Cherkashin , J. Doyne Farmer , Seth Lloyd

Competitor rating systems for head-to-head games are typically used to measure playing strength from game outcomes. Ratings computed from these systems are often used to select top competitors for elite events, for pairing players of…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-07-14 Mark E. Glickman

Beginning with Witkowski et al. [2022], recent work on forecasting competitions has addressed incentive problems with the common winner-take-all mechanism. Frongillo et al. [2021] propose a competition mechanism based on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-27 Rafael Frongillo , Manuel Lladser , Anish Thilagar , Bo Waggoner

In this paper, we present a simplified framework to represent competition, coordination and bargaining in fisheries when they operate under financial and technological constraints. Competition within constraints leads to a particular type…

Economics · Quantitative Finance 2017-01-26 Christian Mullon , Charles Mullon

In this paper, we consider a general distributed system with multiple agents who select and then implement actions in the system. The system has an operator with a centralized objective. The agents, on the other hand, are selfinterested and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-01-15 Donya Ghavidel , Pratyush Chakraborty , Enrique Baeyens , Vijay Gupta , Pramod P. Khargonekar

We initiate the study of a repeated principal-agent problem over a finite horizon $T$, where a principal sequentially interacts with $K\geq 2$ types of agents arriving in an adversarial order. At each round, the principal strategically…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-08-05 Junyan Liu , Arnab Maiti , Artin Tajdini , Kevin Jamieson , Lillian J. Ratliff

We consider a system where agents enter in an online fashion and are evaluated based on their attributes or context vectors. There can be practical situations where this context is partially observed, and the unobserved part comes after…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-07-11 Avishek Ghosh , Kannan Ramchandran