Related papers: Nested search
Sequential search models provide a powerful framework for studying consumer search using rich data that records the sequence of consumer actions taken during the search process. In existing empirical applications, their implementation often…
How does competition in markets for information affect the creation and division of surplus? We study this question in a search environment in which an agent searches sequentially for a high-quality good and learns about the quality of…
We introduce two novel tree search algorithms that use a policy to guide search. The first algorithm is a best-first enumeration that uses a cost function that allows us to prove an upper bound on the number of nodes to be expanded before…
The problem of {\em efficiently} finding the best match for a query in a given set with respect to the Euclidean distance or the cosine similarity has been extensively studied in literature. However, a closely related problem of efficiently…
Public goods games represent insightful settings for studying incentives for individual agents to make contributions that, while costly for each of them, benefit the wider society. In this work, we adopt the perspective of a central planner…
We study markets where firms compete for consumer attention by subsidizing costly product inspection. These subsidies do not change product quality, but they alter the order in which consumers search by lowering inspection costs. We…
We study the monopolist's screening problem with a multi-dimensional distribution of consumers and a one-dimensional space of goods. We establish general conditions under which solutions satisfy a structural condition known as nestedness,…
We consider the neighborhood tree induced by alternating the use of different neighborhood structures within a local search descent. We investigate the issue of designing a search strategy operating at the neighborhood tree level by…
We study the classic problem in which a Searcher must locate a hidden point, also called the Hider in a network, starting from a root point. The network may be either bounded or unbounded, thus generalizing well-known settings such as…
We present a study of several generic tree search techniques applied to the Sequential Ordering Problem. This study enables us to propose a simple and competitive tree search algorithm. It consists of an iterative Beam Search algorithm that…
We study how to optimally segment monopolistic markets with a redistributive objective. We characterize optimal redistributive segmentations and show that they (i) induce the seller to price progressively, i.e., charge richer consumers…
We study a ranking and selection problem of learning from choice-based feedback with dynamic assortments. In this problem, a company sequentially displays a set of items to a population of customers and collects their choices as feedback.…
The Pandora's box problem (Weitzman 1979) is a core model in economic theory that captures an agent's (Pandora's) search for the best alternative (box). We study an important generalization of the problem where the agent can either fully…
We introduce the zip tree, a form of randomized binary search tree that integrates previous ideas into one practical, performant, and pleasant-to-implement package. A zip tree is a binary search tree in which each node has a numeric rank…
We study the problem of learning a good search policy for combinatorial search spaces. We propose retrospective imitation learning, which, after initial training by an expert, improves itself by learning from \textit{retrospective…
This paper studies a search problem where a consumer is initially aware of only a few products. At every point in time, the consumer then decides between searching among alternatives he is already aware of and discovering more products. I…
We study an economic model where agents trade a variety of products by using one of three competing rules: "need", "greed" and "noise". We find that the optimal strategy for any agent depends on both product composition in the overall…
Autonomous agents need to make decisions in a sequential manner, under partially observable environment, and in consideration of how other agents behave. In critical situations, such decisions need to be made in real time for example to…
Identifying the rank of species in a social or ecological network is a difficult task, since the rank of each species is invariably determined by complex interactions stipulated with other species. Simply put, the rank of a species is a…
We consider the problem of search through comparisons, where a user is presented with two candidate objects and reveals which is closer to her intended target. We study adaptive strategies for finding the target, that require knowledge of…