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The Pandora's box problem (Weitzman 1979) is a core model in economic theory that captures an agent's (Pandora's) search for the best alternative (box). We study an important generalization of the problem where the agent can either fully…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Ali Aouad , Jingwei Ji , Yaron Shaposhnik

The Pandora's Box Problem, originally formalized by Weitzman in 1979, models selection from set of random, alternative options, when evaluation is costly. This includes, for example, the problem of hiring a skilled worker, where only one…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-02-20 Shant Boodaghians , Federico Fusco , Philip Lazos , Stefano Leonardi

Weitzman (1979) introduced the Pandora Box problem as a model for sequential search with inspection costs, and gave an elegant index-based policy that attains provably optimal expected payoff. In various scenarios, the searching agent may…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-12-06 Hu Fu , Jiawei Li , Daogao Liu

In a classic model analysed by Weitzman an agent is presented with boxes containing prizes. She may open boxes in any order, discover prizes within, and optimally stop. She wishes to maximize the expected value of the greatest prize found,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-10-01 Wojciech Olszewski , Richard Weber

We consider online variations of the Pandora's box problem (Weitzman. 1979), a standard model for understanding issues related to the cost of acquiring information for decision-making. Our problem generalizes both the classic Pandora's box…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-01-31 Hossein Esfandiari , MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi , Brendan Lucier , Michael Mitzenmacher

Pandora's Box is a fundamental stochastic optimization problem, where the decision-maker must find a good alternative while minimizing the search cost of exploring the value of each alternative. In the original formulation, it is assumed…

The Pandora's Box problem and its extensions capture optimization problems with stochastic input where the algorithm can obtain instantiations of input random variables at some cost. To our knowledge, all previous work on this class of…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-04-17 Shuchi Chawla , Evangelia Gergatsouli , Yifeng Teng , Christos Tzamos , Ruimin Zhang

The Pandora's Box problem models the search for the best alternative when evaluation is costly. In the simplest variant, a decision maker is presented with $n$ boxes, each associated with a cost of inspection and a hidden random reward. The…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-11-18 Georgios Amanatidis , Ben Berger , Tomer Ezra , Michal Feldman , Federico Fusco , Rebecca Reiffenhäuser , Artem Tsikiridis

Weitzman introduced Pandora's box problem as a mathematical model of sequential search with inspection costs, in which a searcher is allowed to select a prize from one of $n$ alternatives. Several decades later, Doval introduced a close…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-12-06 Hedyeh Beyhaghi , Linda Cai

In 1979, Weitzman introduced Pandora's box problem as a framework for sequential search with costly inspections. Recently, there has been a surge of interest in Pandora's box problem, particularly among researchers working at the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-08-24 Hedyeh Beyhaghi , Linda Cai

Two central problems in Stochastic Optimization are Min Sum Set Cover and Pandora's Box. In Pandora's Box, we are presented with $n$ boxes, each containing an unknown value and the goal is to open the boxes in some order to minimize the sum…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-02 Evangelia Gergatsouli , Christos Tzamos

We revisit the classic Pandora's Box (PB) problem under correlated distributions on the box values. Recent work of arXiv:1911.01632 obtained constant approximate algorithms for a restricted class of policies for the problem that visit boxes…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-07-25 Shuchi Chawla , Evangelia Gergatsouli , Jeremy McMahan , Christos Tzamos

We study a natural competitive-information-design strategic variant for the celebrated Pandora's Box problem (Weitzman, 1979), where each box is associated with a strategic information sender who can design what information about the box's…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-02-25 Bolin Ding , Yiding Feng , Chien-Ju Ho , Wei Tang , Haifeng Xu

Martin Weitzman's "Pandora's problem" furnishes the mathematical basis for optimal search theory in economics. Nearly 40 years later, Laura Doval introduced a version of the problem in which the searcher is not obligated to pay the cost of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-05-07 Hedyeh Beyhaghi , Robert Kleinberg

The Correlated Pandora's Problem posed by Chawla et al. (2020) generalizes the classical Pandora's Problem by allowing the numbers inside the Pandora's boxes to be correlated. It also generalizes the Min Sum Set Cover problem, and is…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-10-13 Nikhil Bansal , Zhiyi Huang , Zixuan Zhu

We consider max-weighted matching with costs for learning the weights, modeled as a "Pandora's Box" on each endpoint of an edge. Each vertex has an initially-unknown value for being matched to a neighbor, and an algorithm must pay some cost…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-06-30 Robin Bowers , Bo Waggoner

Pandora's problem is a fundamental model in economics that studies optimal search strategies under costly inspection. In this paper we initiate the study of Pandora's problem with combinatorial costs, capturing many real-life scenarios…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-02-20 Ben Berger , Tomer Ezra , Michal Feldman , Federico Fusco

Selection problems with costly information, dating back to Weitzman's Pandora's Box problem, have received much attention recently. We study the general model of Costly Information Combinatorial Selection (CICS) that was recently introduced…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Shuchi Chawla , Dimitris Christou , Trung Dang

We investigate the role of inaccurate priors for the classical Pandora's box problem. In the classical Pandora's box problem we are given a set of boxes each with a known cost and an unknown value sampled from a known distribution. We…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-02-07 Kiarash Banihashem , Xiang Chen , MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi , Sungchul Kim , Kanak Mahadik , Ryan Rossi , Tong Yu

In this paper, we study the Markovian Pandora's Box Problem, where decisions are governed by both order constraints and Markovianly correlated rewards, structured within a shared directed acyclic graph. To the best of our knowledge,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-02-04 Yuanyuan Yang , Ruimin Zhang , Jamie Morgenstern , Haifeng Xu
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