Optimal Stopping with Interdependent Values

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Mauras, Simon, Mohan, Divyarthi, Reiffenhäuser, Rebecca
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Mauras, Simon
Mohan, Divyarthi
Reiffenhäuser, Rebecca
author_facet Mauras, Simon
Mohan, Divyarthi
Reiffenhäuser, Rebecca
contents We study online selection problems in both the prophet and secretary settings, when arriving agents have interdependent values. In the interdependent values model, introduced in the seminal work of Milgrom and Weber [1982], each agent has a private signal and the value of an agent is a function of the signals held by all agents. Results in online selection crucially rely on some degree of independence of values, which is conceptually at odds with the interdependent values model. For prophet and secretary models under the standard independent values assumption, prior works provide constant factor approximations to the welfare. On the other hand, when agents have interdependent values, prior works in Economics and Computer Science provide truthful mechanisms that obtain optimal and approximately optimal welfare under certain assumptions on the valuation functions. We bring together these two important lines of work and provide the first constant factor approximations for prophet and secretary problems with interdependent values. We consider both the algorithmic setting, where agents are non-strategic (but have interdependent values), and the mechanism design setting with strategic agents. All our results are constructive and use simple stopping rules.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_06293
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimal Stopping with Interdependent Values
Mauras, Simon
Mohan, Divyarthi
Reiffenhäuser, Rebecca
Computer Science and Game Theory
Data Structures and Algorithms
We study online selection problems in both the prophet and secretary settings, when arriving agents have interdependent values. In the interdependent values model, introduced in the seminal work of Milgrom and Weber [1982], each agent has a private signal and the value of an agent is a function of the signals held by all agents. Results in online selection crucially rely on some degree of independence of values, which is conceptually at odds with the interdependent values model. For prophet and secretary models under the standard independent values assumption, prior works provide constant factor approximations to the welfare. On the other hand, when agents have interdependent values, prior works in Economics and Computer Science provide truthful mechanisms that obtain optimal and approximately optimal welfare under certain assumptions on the valuation functions. We bring together these two important lines of work and provide the first constant factor approximations for prophet and secretary problems with interdependent values. We consider both the algorithmic setting, where agents are non-strategic (but have interdependent values), and the mechanism design setting with strategic agents. All our results are constructive and use simple stopping rules.
title Optimal Stopping with Interdependent Values
topic Computer Science and Game Theory
Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.06293