English
Related papers

Related papers: Optimal Mechanism in a Dynamic Stochastic Knapsack…

200 papers

We study the design of optimal allocation mechanisms in an environment where agents and goods arrive stochastically. Agents have private types that determine the principal payoff. Either agents or goods can be held in a queue at a flow cost…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-02-05 Zihao Li , Xuandong Chen

We consider the Item Pricing problem for revenue maximization in the limited supply setting, where a single seller with $n$ items caters to $m$ buyers with unknown subadditive valuation functions who arrive in a sequence. The seller sets…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2009-05-21 Tanmoy Chakraborty , Zhiyi Huang , Sanjeev Khanna

We study the dynamic programming approach to revenue management in the context of attended home delivery. We draw on results from dynamic programming theory for Markov decision problems to show that the underlying Bellman operator has a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-10-28 Denis Lebedev , Paul Goulart , Kostas Margellos

This paper concerns the mechanism design for online resource allocation in a strategic setting. In this setting, a single supplier allocates capacity-limited resources to requests that arrive in a sequential and arbitrary manner. Each…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-10-10 Xiaoqi Tan , Bo Sun , Alberto Leon-Garcia , Yuan Wu , Danny H. K. Tsang

Bilateral trade models the task of intermediating between two strategic agents, a seller and a buyer, willing to trade a good for which they hold private valuations. We study this problem from the perspective of a broker, in a regret…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-29 Simone Di Gregorio , Paul Dütting , Federico Fusco , Chris Schwiegelshohn

In this paper, we study the following robust optimization problem. Given an independence system and candidate objective functions, we choose an independent set, and then an adversary chooses one objective function, knowing our choice. Our…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-05-22 Yasushi Kawase , Hanna Sumita

In behavioral economics, human decision makers are modeled as anticipatory agents that make decisions by taking into account the probability of future decisions (plans). We consider cyber-physical systems involving the interaction between…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-02-24 Vikram Krishnamurthy

We consider a discrete-time bipartite matching model with random arrivals of units of supply and demand that can wait in queues located at the nodes in the network. A control policy determines which are matched at each time. The focus is on…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2016-06-28 Ana Bušić , Sean Meyn

We revisit the Stochastic Knapsack problem, where a policy-maker chooses an execution order for jobs with fixed values and stochastic running-times, aiming to maximize the value completed by a deadline. Dean et al. (FOCS'04) show that…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-18 Zohar Barak , Asnat Berlin , Ilan Reuven Cohen , Alon Eden , Omri Porat , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

Dynamic pricing schemes were introduced as an alternative to posted-price mechanisms. In contrast to static models, the dynamic setting allows to update the prices between buyer-arrivals based on the remaining sets of items and buyers, and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-04-27 Kristóf Bérczi , Erika R. Bérczi-Kovács , Evelin Szögi

When are dynamics valuable? In Bayesian environments with public signals and no intertemporal commitment, we study a seller who allocates an economically single-shot resource over time. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions under…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-12-30 Xiaopeng Zeng , Erbao Cao

Optimal mechanisms have been provided in quite general multi-item settings, as long as each bidder's type distribution is given explicitly by listing every type in the support along with its associated probability. In the implicit setting,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-03-09 Constantinos Daskalakis , Alan Deckelbaum , Christos Tzamos

Active inference is a probabilistic framework for modelling the behaviour of biological and artificial agents, which derives from the principle of minimising free energy. In recent years, this framework has successfully been applied to a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-07-13 Lancelot Da Costa , Noor Sajid , Thomas Parr , Karl Friston , Ryan Smith

We propose a new approach to solving dynamic decision problems with rewards that are unbounded below. The approach involves transforming the Bellman equation in order to convert an unbounded problem into a bounded one. The major advantage…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2019-12-02 Qingyin Ma , John Stachurski

Iterative trajectory optimization techniques for non-linear dynamical systems are among the most powerful and sample-efficient methods of model-based reinforcement learning and approximate optimal control. By leveraging time-variant local…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2019-08-01 Onur Celik , Hany Abdulsamad , Jan Peters

We study the problem of selling information to a data-buyer who faces a decision problem under uncertainty. We consider the classic Bayesian decision-theoretic model pioneered by [Blackwell, 1951, 1953]. Initially, the data buyer has only…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-02-21 Dirk Bergemann , Yang Cai , Grigoris Velegkas , Mingfei Zhao

The online knapsack problem is a classic problem in the field of online algorithms. Its canonical version asks how to pack items of different values and weights arriving online into a capacity-limited knapsack so as to maximize the total…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-18 Adam Lechowicz , Rik Sengupta , Bo Sun , Shahin Kamali , Mohammad Hajiesmaili

Robust mechanism design is a rising alternative to Bayesian mechanism design, which yields designs that do not rely on assumptions like full distributional knowledge. We apply this approach to mechanisms for selling a single item, assuming…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-05-24 Nir Bachrach , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

We describe an approximate dynamic programming method for stochastic control problems on infinite state and input spaces. The optimal value function is approximated by a linear combination of basis functions with coefficients as decision…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2012-12-07 Tyler H. Summers , Konstantin Kunz , Nikolaos Kariotoglou , Maryam Kamgarpour , Sean Summers , John Lygeros

Under the assumption of no-arbitrage, the pricing of American and Bermudan options can be casted into optimal stopping problems. We propose a new adaptive simulation based algorithm for the numerical solution of optimal stopping problems in…

Probability · Mathematics 2009-09-29 Daniel Egloff , Michael Kohler , Nebojsa Todorovic