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The primary objective of this note is to revisit the two envelope problem and propose a simple resolution. It is argued that the paradox arises from the ambiguity associated with the money content $x of the chosen envelope. When X=x is…
Consider the following game: You are given two indistinguishable envelopes, each containing money. One contains twice as much as the other. You may pick one envelope and keep the money it contains. Having chosen an envelope, you are given…
Effective load balancing lies at the heart of many applications in operations. Frequently tackled via the balls-into-bins paradigm, seminal results established the power of two choices in load balancing: a limited amount of costly…
The "paradox" arises in the Two Envelopes Paradox from the incorrect formulation of the argument. The infomation given is misused and therefore the results are incorrect for the question asked. The key is to be clear on what question we are…
According to conventional wisdom, ambiguity accelerates optimal timing by decreasing the value of waiting in comparison with the unambiguous benchmark case. We study this mechanism in a multidimensional setting and show that in a…
Consider a customer who needs to fulfill a shopping list, and also a personal shopper who is willing to buy and resell to customers the goods in their shopping lists. It is in the personal shopper's best interest to find (shopping) routes…
In this paper, I will demonstrate a new perspective on the Two Envelope Problem. I hope to show with convincing clarity how the paradox results from an inherent problem pertaining to the interpretation of Bayesian probability. Specifically,…
We study a bilateral trade problem where a principal has private information that is revealed with delay, such as a seller who does not yet know her production cost. Postponing the contracting process incurs a costly delay, while early…
We study the problem of designing a two-sided market (double auction) to maximize the gains from trade (social welfare) under the constraints of (dominant-strategy) incentive compatibility and budget-balance. Our goal is to do so for an…
In Newcomb's paradox you choose to receive either the contents of a particular closed box, or the contents of both that closed box and another one. Before you choose, a prediction algorithm deduces your choice, and fills the two boxes based…
The two envelopes paradox is discussed. By calculating the conditional probability, we arrive at a conditional expectations which differs from existing results.
We design novel mechanisms for welfare-maximization in two-sided markets. That is, there are buyers willing to purchase items and sellers holding items initially, both acting rationally and strategically in order to maximize utility. Our…
In our time cybersecurity has grown to be a topic of massive proportion at the national and enterprise levels. Our thesis is that the economic perspective and investment decision-making are vital factors in determining the outcome of the…
This paper is concerned with the determination of pricing strategies for a firm that in each period of a finite horizon receives replenishment quantities of a single product which it sells in two markets, e.g., a long-distance market and an…
In Newcomb's paradox you choose to receive either the contents of a particular closed box, or the contents of both that closed box and another one. Before you choose though, an antagonist uses a prediction algorithm to deduce your choice,…
The quality of enumeration algorithms is often measured by their delay, that is, the maximal time spent between the output of two distinct solutions. If the goal is to enumerate $t$ distinct solutions for any given $t$, then another…
I discuss how five reasonably sounding assumptions lead to a dilemma -- the Page-time paradox -- , which appears to challenge a conventional statistical mechanical underpinning of black hole thermodynamics. By inspecting the conceptual…
We consider stopping problems in which a decision maker (DM) faces an unknown state of nature and decides sequentially whether to stop and take an irreversible action; pay a fee and obtain additional information; or wait without acquiring…
We study an optimal stopping problem under non-exponential discounting, where the state process is a multi-dimensional continuous strong Markov process. The discount function is taken to be log sub-additive, capturing decreasing impatience…
The host of a game presents two indistinguishable envelopes to an agent. One of the envelopes is randomly selected and allocated to the agent. The agent is informed that the monetary content of one of the envelopes is twice that of the…