Related papers: A Taste for Variety
We consider a model where an agent has a repeated decision to make and wishes to maximize their total payoff. Payoffs are influenced by an action taken by the agent, but also an unknown state of the world that evolves over time. Before…
A decision-maker periodically acquires information about a changing state, controlling both the timing and content of updates. I characterize optimal policies using a decomposition of the dynamic problem into optimal stopping and static…
This paper presents a new exponential lower bound for the two most popular deterministic variants of the strategy improvement algorithms for solving parity, mean payoff, discounted payoff and simple stochastic games. The first variant…
A decision maker is choosing between an active action (e.g., purchase a house, invest certain stock) and a passive action. The payoff of the active action depends on the buyer's private type and also an unknown state of nature. An…
The coordinated and efficient distribution of limited resources by individual decisions is a fundamental, unsolved problem. When individuals compete for road capacities, time, space, money, goods, etc., they normally make decisions based on…
Adaptive populations such as those in financial markets and distributed control can be modeled by the Minority Game. We consider how their dynamics depends on the agents' initial preferences of strategies, when the agents use linear or…
Most decision theories, including expected utility theory, rank dependent utility theory and cumulative prospect theory, assume that investors are only interested in the distribution of returns and not in the states of the economy in which…
We study a decision-maker's problem of finding optimal monetary incentive schemes for retention when faced with agents whose participation decisions (stochastically) depend on the incentive they receive. Our focus is on policies constrained…
We study zero-sum repeated games where the minimizing player has to pay a certain cost each time he changes his action. Our contribution is twofold. First, we show that the value of the game exists in stationary strategies, depending solely…
We examine the problem of the existence of optimal deterministic stationary strategiesintwo-players antagonistic (zero-sum) perfect information stochastic games with finitely many states and actions.We show that the existenceof such…
I study robust comparative statics for risk-averse subjective expected utility (SEU) maximizers. Starting with a finite menu of actions totally ordered by sensitivity to risk, I identify the transformations of her menu that lead a…
This paper studies a risk-sensitive decision-making problem under uncertainty. It considers a decision-making process that unfolds over a fixed number of stages, in which a decision-maker chooses among multiple alternatives, some of which…
The valuation process that economic agents undergo for investments with uncertain payoff typically depends on their statistical views on possible future outcomes, their attitudes toward risk, and, of course, the payoff structure itself.…
We consider a sequential decision-making problem where an agent can take one action at a time and each action has a stochastic temporal extent, i.e., a new action cannot be taken until the previous one is finished. Upon completion, the…
A reinforcement learning agent tries to maximize its cumulative payoff by interacting in an unknown environment. It is important for the agent to explore suboptimal actions as well as to pick actions with highest known rewards. Yet, in…
We consider multi-dimensional payoff functions in partially observable Markov decision processes. We study the structure of the set of expected payoff vectors of all strategies (policies) and study what kind are needed to achieve a given…
We study countably infinite Markov decision processes (MDPs) with real-valued transition rewards. Every infinite run induces the following sequences of payoffs: 1. Point payoff (the sequence of directly seen transition rewards), 2. Mean…
A valuation for a player in a game in extensive form is an assignment of numeric values to the players moves. The valuation reflects the desirability moves. We assume a myopic player, who chooses a move with the highest valuation.…
We consider portfolio optimization under a preference model in a single-period, complete market. This preference model includes Yaari's dual theory of choice and quantile maximization as special cases. We characterize when the optimal…
We consider infinite-state turn-based stochastic games of two players, Box and Diamond, who aim at maximizing and minimizing the expected total reward accumulated along a run, respectively. Since the total accumulated reward is unbounded,…