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Related papers: Semi-parametric dynamic contextual pricing

200 papers

First-price auctions have recently gained significant traction in digital advertising markets, exemplified by Google's transition from second-price to first-price auctions. Unlike in second-price auctions, where bidding one's private…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Zihao Hu , Xiaoyu Fan , Yuan Yao , Jiheng Zhang , Zhengyuan Zhou

We consider a novel variant of the contextual bandit problem (i.e., the multi-armed bandit with side-information, or context, available to a decision-maker) where the reward associated with each context-based decision may not always be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-21 Djallel Bouneffouf , Sohini Upadhyay , Yasaman Khazaeni

Dynamic pricing is crucial in sectors like e-commerce and transportation, balancing exploration of demand patterns and exploitation of pricing strategies. Existing methods often require precise knowledge of the demand function, e.g., the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Xueping Gong , Jiheng Zhang

Parametric, feature-based reward models are employed by a variety of algorithms in decision-making settings such as bandits and Markov decision processes (MDPs). The typical assumption under which the algorithms are analysed is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-23 Debangshu Banerjee , Aditya Gopalan

Real-world applications of contextual bandits often exhibit non-stationarity due to seasonality, serendipity, and evolving social trends. While a number of non-stationary contextual bandit learning algorithms have been proposed in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-17 Zheqing Zhu , Yueyang Liu , Xu Kuang , Benjamin Van Roy

We propose nonparametric identification and semiparametric estimation of joint potential outcome distributions in the presence of confounding. First, in settings with observed confounding, we derive tighter, covariate-informed bounds on the…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-19 Jianle Sun , Kun Zhang

We consider the problem of contextual bandits and imitation learning, where the learner lacks direct knowledge of the executed action's reward. Instead, the learner can actively query an expert at each round to compare two actions and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-25 Ayush Sekhari , Karthik Sridharan , Wen Sun , Runzhe Wu

The contextual combinatorial semi-bandit problem with linear payoff functions is a decision-making problem in which a learner chooses a set of arms with the feature vectors in each round under given constraints so as to maximize the sum of…

We study how a budget-constrained bidder should learn to adaptively bid in repeated first-price auctions to maximize her cumulative payoff. This problem arose due to an industry-wide shift from second-price auctions to first-price auctions…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-14 Yige Wang , Jiashuo Jiang

We analyze the $K$-armed bandit problem where the reward for each arm is a noisy realization based on an observed context under mild nonparametric assumptions. We attain tight results for top-arm identification and a sublinear regret of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-01-08 Melody Y. Guan , Heinrich Jiang

Contextual bandits serve as a fundamental model for many sequential decision making tasks. The most popular theoretically justified approaches are based on the optimism principle. While these algorithms can be practical, they are known to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-17 Botao Hao , Tor Lattimore , Csaba Szepesvari

Contextual bandits are widely used in industrial personalization systems. These online learning frameworks learn a treatment assignment policy in the presence of treatment effects that vary with the observed contextual features of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-11 Claudia Roberts , Maria Dimakopoulou , Qifeng Qiao , Ashok Chandrashekhar , Tony Jebara

In many bandit problems, the maximal reward achievable by a policy is often unknown in advance. We consider the problem of estimating the optimal policy value in the sublinear data regime before the optimal policy is even learnable. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-21 Jonathan N. Lee , Weihao Kong , Aldo Pacchiano , Vidya Muthukumar , Emma Brunskill

Non-stationary multi-armed bandits enable agents to adapt to changing environments by incorporating mechanisms to detect and respond to shifts in reward distributions, making them well-suited for dynamic settings. However, existing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-19 Shaoang Li , Jian Li

In markets where algorithmic data processing is increasingly prevalent, recommendation algorithms can substantially affect trade and welfare. We consider a setting in which an algorithm recommends a product based on its value to the buyer…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-06-17 Shota Ichihashi , Alex Smolin

We consider the combinatorial bandits problem with semi-bandit feedback under finite sampling budget constraints, in which the learner can carry out its action only for a limited number of times specified by an overall budget. The action is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-17 Jasmin Brandt , Viktor Bengs , Björn Haddenhorst , Eyke Hüllermeier

Recommendation systems when employed in markets play a dual role: they assist users in selecting their most desired items from a large pool and they help in allocating a limited number of items to the users who desire them the most. Despite…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-01 Yigit Efe Erginbas , Soham Phade , Kannan Ramchandran

The goal of data-driven algorithm design is to obtain high-performing algorithms for specific application domains using machine learning and data. Across many fields in AI, science, and engineering, practitioners will often fix a family of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-22 Maria-Florina Balcan , Travis Dick , Wesley Pegden

This study investigates the problem of $K$-armed linear contextual bandits, an instance of the multi-armed bandit problem, under an adversarial corruption. At each round, a decision-maker observes an independent and identically distributed…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-29 Masahiro Kato , Shinji Ito

We formulate a new problem at the intersectionof semi-supervised learning and contextual bandits,motivated by several applications including clini-cal trials and ad recommendations. We demonstratehow Graph Convolutional Network (GCN), a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-26 Sohini Upadhyay , Mikhail Yurochkin , Mayank Agarwal , Yasaman Khazaeni , DjallelBouneffouf