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This paper studies prototypical strategies to sequentially aggregate independent decisions. We consider a collection of agents, each performing binary hypothesis testing and each obtaining a decision over time. We assume the agents are…

Applications · Statistics 2010-08-30 Sandra H. Dandach , Ruggero Carli , Francesco Bullo

We study information design settings where the designer controls information about a state, and there are multiple agents interacting in a game who are privately informed about their types. Each agent's utility depends on all agents' types…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-01-31 Ozan Candogan , Philipp Strack

We study a censored variant of the data-driven newsvendor problem, where the decision-maker must select an ordering quantity that minimizes expected overage and underage costs based only on offline censored sales data, rather than…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-22 Chamsi Hssaine , Sean R. Sinclair

We study the assignment problem of objects to agents with heterogeneous preferences under distributional constraints. Each agent is associated with a publicly known type and has a private ordinal ranking over objects. We are interested in…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-05-02 Itai Ashlagi , Amin Saberi , Ali Shameli

We investigate opinion dynamics in a fully-connected system, consisting of $n$ identical and anonymous agents, where one of the opinions (which is called correct) represents a piece of information to disseminate. In more detail, one source…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2023-02-20 Luca Becchetti , Andrea Clementi , Amos Korman , Francesco Pasquale , Luca Trevisan , Robin Vacus

In the Newsvendor problem, the goal is to guess the number that will be drawn from some distribution, with asymmetric consequences for guessing too high vs. too low. In the data-driven version, the distribution is unknown, and one must work…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-05 Zhuoxin Chen , Will Ma

Recent works have shown that agents facing independent instances of a stochastic $K$-armed bandit can collaborate to decrease regret. However, these works assume that each agent always recommends their individual best-arm estimates to other…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-02 Daniel Vial , Sanjay Shakkottai , R. Srikant

When allocating indivisible items to agents, it is known that the only strategyproof mechanisms that satisfy a set of rather mild conditions are constrained serial dictatorships: given a fixed order over agents, at each step the designated…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-02-28 Sylvain Bouveret , Hugo Gilbert , Jérôme Lang , Guillaume Méroué

We characterize the optimal reward functions (scoring rules) that incentivize an agent to acquire information and report it truthfully to the principal. The optimal scoring rules let the agent make a simple binary bet in single-dimensional…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-03 Jason D. Hartline , Yingkai Li , Liren Shan , Yifan Wu

An agent chooses an action based on her private information and a recommendation from an informed but potentially misaligned adviser. With a known probability, the adviser truthfully reports his signal; with the remaining probability, he…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-03-20 Piotr Dworczak , Alex Smolin

We consider regret minimization in a general collaborative multi-agent multi-armed bandit model, in which each agent faces a finite set of arms and may communicate with other agents through a central controller. The optimal arm for each…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-18 Amitis Shidani , Sattar Vakili

When facing many options, we narrow down our focus to very few of them. Although behaviors like this can be a sign of heuristics, they can actually be optimal under limited cognitive resources. Here we study the problem of how to optimally…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2021-02-03 Jorge Ramírez-Ruiz , Rubén Moreno-Bote

We study non-rectangular robust Markov decision processes under the average-reward criterion, where the ambiguity set couples transition probabilities across states and the adversary commits to a stationary kernel for the entire horizon. We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-11 Shengbo Wang , Nian Si

Stochastic linear bandits are a fundamental model for sequential decision making, where an agent selects a vector-valued action and receives a noisy reward with expected value given by an unknown linear function. Although well studied in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-23 Bruce Huang , Ruida Zhou , Lin F. Yang , Suhas Diggavi

Consider a planner who has limited knowledge of the policy's causal impact on a certain local population of interest due to a lack of data, but does have access to the publicized intervention studies performed for similar policies on…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-07-04 Takuya Ishihara , Toru Kitagawa

We study structured multi-armed bandits, which is the problem of online decision-making under uncertainty in the presence of structural information. In this problem, the decision-maker needs to discover the best course of action despite…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-11 Bart P. G. Van Parys , Negin Golrezaei

We study a sequential mechanism design problem in which a principal seeks to elicit truthful reports from multiple rational agents while starting with no prior knowledge of agents' beliefs. We introduce Distributionally Robust Adaptive…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-22 Qiushi Han , David Simchi-Levi , Renfei Tan , Zishuo Zhao

In the secretary problem of Cayley (1875) and Moser (1956), $n$ non-negative, independent, random variables with common distribution are sequentially presented to a decision maker who decides when to stop and collect the most recent…

Probability · Mathematics 2019-10-22 Alessandro Arlotto , Itai Gurvich

We propose and design recommendation systems that incentivize efficient exploration. Agents arrive sequentially, choose actions and receive rewards, drawn from fixed but unknown action-specific distributions. The recommendation system…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Nicole Immorlica , Jieming Mao , Aleksandrs Slivkins , Zhiwei Steven Wu

A researcher observes a finite sequence of choices made by multiple agents in a binary-state environment. Agents maximize expected utilities that depend on their chosen alternative and the unknown underlying state. Agents learn about the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2021-05-11 Rahul Deb , Ludovic Renou