Nonparametric Contextual Online Bilateral Trade

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Coccia, Emanuele, Bernasconi, Martino, Celli, Andrea
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866908833388953600
author Coccia, Emanuele
Bernasconi, Martino
Celli, Andrea
author_facet Coccia, Emanuele
Bernasconi, Martino
Celli, Andrea
contents We study the problem of contextual online bilateral trade. At each round, the learner faces a seller-buyer pair and must propose a trade price without observing their private valuations for the item being sold. The goal of the learner is to post prices to facilitate trades between the two parties. Before posting a price, the learner observes a $d$-dimensional context vector that influences the agent's valuations. Prior work in the contextual setting has focused on linear models. In this work, we tackle a general nonparametric setting in which the buyer's and seller's valuations behave according to arbitrary Lipschitz functions of the context. We design an algorithm that leverages contextual information through a hierarchical tree construction and guarantees regret $\widetilde{O}(T^{{(d-1)}/d})$. Remarkably, our algorithm operates under two stringent features of the setting: (1) one-bit feedback, where the learner only observes whether a trade occurred or not, and (2) strong budget balance, where the learner cannot subsidize or profit from the market participants. We further provide a matching lower bound in the full-feedback setting, demonstrating the tightness of our regret bound.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_12904
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Nonparametric Contextual Online Bilateral Trade
Coccia, Emanuele
Bernasconi, Martino
Celli, Andrea
Computer Science and Game Theory
Machine Learning
We study the problem of contextual online bilateral trade. At each round, the learner faces a seller-buyer pair and must propose a trade price without observing their private valuations for the item being sold. The goal of the learner is to post prices to facilitate trades between the two parties. Before posting a price, the learner observes a $d$-dimensional context vector that influences the agent's valuations. Prior work in the contextual setting has focused on linear models. In this work, we tackle a general nonparametric setting in which the buyer's and seller's valuations behave according to arbitrary Lipschitz functions of the context. We design an algorithm that leverages contextual information through a hierarchical tree construction and guarantees regret $\widetilde{O}(T^{{(d-1)}/d})$. Remarkably, our algorithm operates under two stringent features of the setting: (1) one-bit feedback, where the learner only observes whether a trade occurred or not, and (2) strong budget balance, where the learner cannot subsidize or profit from the market participants. We further provide a matching lower bound in the full-feedback setting, demonstrating the tightness of our regret bound.
title Nonparametric Contextual Online Bilateral Trade
topic Computer Science and Game Theory
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12904