Harnessing Unimodality in Semiparametric Contextual Pricing via Oracle Price Map Learning

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Hauptverfasser: Fan, Yingying, Han, Yuxuan, Lv, Jinchi, Xu, Xiaocong, Zhou, Zhengyuan
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Fan, Yingying
Han, Yuxuan
Lv, Jinchi
Xu, Xiaocong
Zhou, Zhengyuan
author_facet Fan, Yingying
Han, Yuxuan
Lv, Jinchi
Xu, Xiaocong
Zhou, Zhengyuan
contents We study contextual dynamic pricing in a semiparametric scalar-index valuation model where the latent value is $v_t=μ_\ast(\mathsf c_t)+ξ_t$, with an unknown utility map $μ_\ast$ and an unknown additive noise distribution. The key decision object is the one-dimensional oracle price map $u\mapsto p^\ast(u)$ induced by the scalar index $u=μ_\ast(\mathsf c)$ and the noise tail. Under the $β$-Hölder smoothness of the tail function for $β\geq 2$ and a revenue-geometry condition that gives a unique, stable, interior maximizer, this oracle map is itself $(β-1)$-smooth. We exploit such structure through $\mathsf{ORBIT}$, a modular coarse-to-fine policy that takes a scalar pilot index as input, localizes a benchmark price in each active bin, and learns a local polynomial approximation of the oracle map inside a trust region via bandit convex optimization. For the baseline linear utility model $μ_\ast(\mathsf c)=\mathsf c^\topθ_\ast$, an adaptive elliptical exploration scheme constructs the required scalar pilot online without distributional assumptions on the contexts. The resulting policy achieves regret $\widetilde{O}\big(T^{\frac{2β-1}{4β-3}}+\sqrt{dT}\big)$. For fixed $d$, we establish a matching lower bound in the horizon dependence, unveiling that the nonparametric oracle-map learning term is minimax sharp. The same scalar-pilot interface also yields extensions to sparse high-dimensional linear utility and nonparametric Hölder utility.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_15411
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Harnessing Unimodality in Semiparametric Contextual Pricing via Oracle Price Map Learning
Fan, Yingying
Han, Yuxuan
Lv, Jinchi
Xu, Xiaocong
Zhou, Zhengyuan
Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
We study contextual dynamic pricing in a semiparametric scalar-index valuation model where the latent value is $v_t=μ_\ast(\mathsf c_t)+ξ_t$, with an unknown utility map $μ_\ast$ and an unknown additive noise distribution. The key decision object is the one-dimensional oracle price map $u\mapsto p^\ast(u)$ induced by the scalar index $u=μ_\ast(\mathsf c)$ and the noise tail. Under the $β$-Hölder smoothness of the tail function for $β\geq 2$ and a revenue-geometry condition that gives a unique, stable, interior maximizer, this oracle map is itself $(β-1)$-smooth. We exploit such structure through $\mathsf{ORBIT}$, a modular coarse-to-fine policy that takes a scalar pilot index as input, localizes a benchmark price in each active bin, and learns a local polynomial approximation of the oracle map inside a trust region via bandit convex optimization. For the baseline linear utility model $μ_\ast(\mathsf c)=\mathsf c^\topθ_\ast$, an adaptive elliptical exploration scheme constructs the required scalar pilot online without distributional assumptions on the contexts. The resulting policy achieves regret $\widetilde{O}\big(T^{\frac{2β-1}{4β-3}}+\sqrt{dT}\big)$. For fixed $d$, we establish a matching lower bound in the horizon dependence, unveiling that the nonparametric oracle-map learning term is minimax sharp. The same scalar-pilot interface also yields extensions to sparse high-dimensional linear utility and nonparametric Hölder utility.
title Harnessing Unimodality in Semiparametric Contextual Pricing via Oracle Price Map Learning
topic Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.15411