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We study the problem of fairly allocating $m$ indivisible goods to $n$ agents, where agents may have different preferences over the goods. In the traditional setting, agents' valuations are provided as inputs to the algorithm. In this…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-08-05 Xiaolin Bu , Zihao Li , Shengxin Liu , Jiaxin Song , Biaoshuai Tao

We initiate the study of centralized algorithms for welfare-maximizing allocation of goods to buyers subject to average-value constraints. We show that this problem is NP-hard to approximate beyond a factor of $\frac{e}{e-1}$, and provide a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-09-09 Kshipra Bhawalkar , Zhe Feng , Anupam Gupta , Aranyak Mehta , David Wajc , Di Wang

We revisit the problem of searching for a target at an unknown location on a line when given upper and lower bounds on the distance D that separates the initial position of the searcher from the target. Prior to this work, only asymptotic…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2013-10-04 Prosenjit Bose , Jean-Lou De Carufel , Stephane Durocher

We study the $b$-matching problem in bipartite graphs $G=(S,R,E)$. Each vertex $s\in S$ is a server with individual capacity $b_s$. The vertices $r\in R$ are requests that arrive online and must be assigned instantly to an eligible server.…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-07-01 Susanne Albers , Sebastian Schubert

We adopt a parametric approach to analyze the worst-case degradation in social welfare when the allocation of indivisible goods is constrained to be fair. Specifically, we are concerned with cardinality-constrained allocations, which…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-01-06 Alexander Lam , Bo Li , Ankang Sun

Ranking algorithms are deployed widely to order a set of items in applications such as search engines, news feeds, and recommendation systems. Recent studies, however, have shown that, left unchecked, the output of ranking algorithms can…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-07-31 L. Elisa Celis , Damian Straszak , Nisheeth K. Vishnoi

We study a wholesale supply chain ordering problem. In this problem, the supplier has an initial stock, and faces an unpredictable stream of incoming orders, making real-time decisions on whether to accept or reject each order. What makes…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-04-08 Will Ma , David Simchi-Levi , Jinglong Zhao

In this paper we consider the online Submodular Welfare (SW) problem. In this problem we are given $n$ bidders each equipped with a general (not necessarily monotone) submodular utility and $m$ items that arrive online. The goal is to…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-03-25 Amit Ganz , Pranav Nuti , Roy Schwartz

Many decision processes run for a long and unknown duration: in each round new requests arrive, an irrevocable choice must be made immediately, and the system is judged by ongoing fairness requirements. Examples include food banks…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Ido Kahana , Erel Segal-Halevi , Noam Hazon

We consider prophet inequalities for XOS and MPH-$k$ combinatorial auctions and give a simplified proof for the existence of static and anonymous item prices which recover the state-of-the-art competitive ratios. Our proofs make use of a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-11-03 Alexander Braun , Thomas Kesselheim

We study the measure of order-competitive ratio introduced by Ezra et al. [2023] for online algorithms in Bayesian combinatorial settings. In our setting, a decision-maker observes a sequence of elements that are associated with stochastic…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-07-07 Tomer Ezra , Tamar Garbuz

For $2\le k\in\mathbb{N}$, consider the following adaptation of the classical secretary problem. There are $k$ items at each of $n$ linearly ordered ranks. The $kn$ items are revealed, one item at a time, in a uniformly random order, to an…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-08-24 Ross G. Pinsky

Suppose $X_1,X_2,...$ are i.i.d. nonnegative random variables with finite expectation, and for each $k$, $X_k$ is observed at the $k$-th arrival time $S_k$ of a Poisson process with unit rate which is independent of the sequence $\{X_k\}$.…

Probability · Mathematics 2010-09-08 Pieter C. Allaart

Online knapsack problem is considered, where items arrive in a sequential fashion that have two attributes; value and weight. Each arriving item has to be accepted or rejected on its arrival irrevocably. The objective is to maximize the sum…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2017-11-30 Rahul Vaze

This paper introduces the \emph{serial-parallel decision problem}. Consider an online scheduler that receives a series of tasks, where each task has both a parallel and a serial implementation. The parallel implementation has the advantage…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-05-21 William Kuszmaul , Alek Westover

The online stochastic matching problem was introduced by [FMMM09], together with the $(1-\frac1e)$-competitive Suggested Matching algorithm. In the most general edge-weighted setting, this ratio has not been improved for more than one…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Shuyi Yan

Motivated by applications where a system must remain operational via continual procurement of contracts, we study two online contract selection problems under uncertain prices. At each time step, a price drawn from a known distribution is…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Qinge Chi , Sebastian Perez-Salazar

We study the classic problem of fairly allocating a set of indivisible goods among a group of agents, and focus on the notion of approximate proportionality known as PROPm. Prior work showed that there exists an allocation that satisfies…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-05-25 Artem Baklanov , Pranav Garimidi , Vasilis Gkatzelis , Daniel Schoepflin

We consider a practically motivated variant of the canonical online fair allocation problem: a decision-maker has a budget of perishable resources to allocate over a fixed number of rounds. Each round sees a random number of arrivals, and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-03 Siddhartha Banerjee , Chamsi Hssaine , Sean R. Sinclair

We consider the matroid prophet inequality problem. This problem has been extensively studied in the case of adaptive mechanisms. In particular, there is a tight $2$-competitive mechanism for all matroids. However, it is not known what…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-08-09 Kanstantsin Pashkovich , Alice Sayutina