Related papers: Tacit algorithmic collusion in deep reinforcement …
This paper studies the problem of stochastic dynamic pricing and energy management policy for electric vehicle (EV) charging service providers. In the presence of renewable energy integration and energy storage system, EV charging service…
AI shopping agents are being deployed to hundreds of millions of consumers, creating a new intermediary between platforms, sellers, and buyers. We identify a novel market failure: vertical tacit collusion, where platforms controlling…
Algorithmic pricing on online e-commerce platforms raises the concern of tacit collusion, where reinforcement learning algorithms learn to set collusive prices in a decentralized manner and through nothing more than profit feedback. This…
Due to the centralization of charging stations (CSs), CSs are organized as charging station alliances (CSAs) in the commercial competition. Under this situation, this paper studies the profit-oriented dynamic pricing strategy of CSAs. As…
Collusion in market pricing is a concept associated with human actions to raise market prices through artificially limited supply. Recently, the idea of algorithmic collusion was put forward, where the human action in the pricing process is…
There has been substantial recent concern that pricing algorithms might learn to ``collude.'' Supra-competitive prices can emerge as a Nash equilibrium of repeated pricing games, in which sellers play strategies which threaten to punish…
This paper examines whether widely used online learning algorithms in pricing can independently reach competitive outcomes or instead foster tacit collusion. This issue has drawn considerable attention from competition regulators as…
In this paper, the problem of electric vehicle (EV) charging at the workplace is addressed via a two-layer predictive algorithm. We consider a time of use (TOU) pricing model for energy drawn from the grid and try to minimize the charging…
The rise of algorithmic pricing in online retail platforms has attracted significant interest in how autonomous software agents interact under competition. This article explores the potential emergence of algorithmic collusion -…
Electric vehicles (EVs) are expected to be a major component of the smart grid. The rapid proliferation of EVs will introduce an unprecedented load on the existing electric grid due to the charging/discharging behavior of the EVs, thus…
With the electrification of ride-hailing fleets, there will be a need to incentivize where and when the ride-hailing vehicles should charge. In this work, we assume that a central authority wants to control the distribution of the vehicles…
The prospect of collusive agreements being stabilized via the use of pricing algorithms is widely discussed by antitrust experts and economists. However, the literature is often lacking the perspective of computer scientists, and seems to…
An existing challenge in power systems is the implementation of optimal demand management through dynamic pricing. This paper encompasses the design, analysis and implementation of a novel on-line pricing scheme based on coalitional game…
In this letter, we address the problem of controlling energy storage systems (ESSs) for arbitrage in real-time electricity markets under price uncertainty. We first formulate this problem as a Markov decision process, and then develop a…
New forms of on-demand transportation such as ride-hailing and connected autonomous vehicles are proliferating, yet are a challenging use case for electric vehicles (EV). This paper explores the feasibility of using deep reinforcement…
In this paper, the problem of grid-to-vehicle energy exchange between a smart grid and plug-in electric vehicle groups (PEVGs) is studied using a noncooperative Stackelberg game. In this game, on the one hand, the smart grid that acts as a…
This study investigates the implications of algorithmic pricing in digital marketplaces, focusing on Airbnb's pricing dynamics. With the advent of Airbnb's new pricing tool, this research explores how digital tools influence hosts' pricing…
This paper introduces the Minimum Price Markov Game (MPMG), a theoretical model that reasonably approximates real-world first-price markets following the minimum price rule, such as public auctions. The goal is to provide researchers and…
This paper develops a formal framework to assess policies of learning algorithms in economic games. We investigate whether reinforcement-learning agents with collusive pricing policies can successfully extrapolate collusive behavior from…
A key assumption made in this paper is that electric vehicle (EV) battery charging profiles are rectangular. This requires a specific and new formulation of the charging problem, involving discrete action sets for the EVs in particular. The…