Related papers: Semi-parametric dynamic contextual pricing
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…