Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userTime-Inconsistent Planning: A Computational Problem in Behavioral Economics
119
0
0.0
(
0
)
Added by
Sigal Oren
Publication date
2014
fields
Informatics Engineering
and research's language is
English
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
In many settings, people exhibit behavior that is inconsistent across time --- we allocate a block of time to get work done and then procrastinate, or put effort into a project and then later fail to complete it. An active line of research in behavioral economics and related fields has developed and analyzed models for this type of time-inconsistent behavior. Here we propose a graph-theoretic model of tasks and goals, in which dependencies among actions are represented by a directed graph, and a time-inconsistent agent constructs a path through this graph. We first show how instances of this path-finding problem on different input graphs can reconstruct a wide range of qualitative phenomena observed in the literature on time-inconsistency, including procrastination, abandonment of long-range tasks, and the benefits of reduced sets of choices. We then explore a set of analyses that quantify over the set of all graphs; among other results, we find that in any graph, there can be only polynomially many distinct forms of time-inconsistent behavior; and any graph in which a time-inconsistent agent incurs significantly more cost than an optimal agent must contain a large procrastination structure as a minor. Finally, we use this graph-theoretic model to explore ways in which tasks can be designed to help motivate agents to reach designated goals.
rate research
Read More
We study a stochastic game framework with dynamic set of players, for modeling and analyzing their computational investment strategies in distributed computing. Players obtain a certain reward for solving the problem or for providing their computational resources, while incur a certain cost based on the invested time and computational power. We first study a scenario where the reward is offered for solving the problem, such as in blockchain mining. We show that, in Markov perfect equilibrium, players with cost parameters exceeding a certain threshold, do not invest; while those with cost parameters less than this threshold, invest maximal power. Here, players need not know the system state. We then consider a scenario where the reward is offered for contributing to the computational power of a common central entity, such as in volunteer computing. Here, in Markov perfect equilibrium, only players with cost parameters in a relatively low range in a given state, invest. For the case where players are homogeneous, they invest proportionally to the reward to cost ratio. For both the scenarios, we study the effects of players arrival and departure rates on their utilities using simulations and provide additional insights.
We propose a truthful-in-expectation, $(1-1/e)$-approximation mechanism for a strategic variant of the generalized assignment problem (GAP). In GAP, a set of items has to be optimally assigned to a set of bins without exceeding the capacity of any singular bin. In the strategic variant of the problem we study, values for assigning items to bins are the private information of bidders and the mechanism should provide bidders with incentives to truthfully report their values. The approximation ratio of the mechanism is a significant improvement over the approximation ratio of the existing truthful mechanism for GAP. The proposed mechanism comprises a novel convex optimization program as the allocation rule as well as an appropriate payment rule. To implement the convex program in polynomial time, we propose a fractional local search algorithm which approximates the optimal solution within an arbitrarily small error leading to an approximately truthful-in-expectation mechanism. The presented algorithm improves upon the existing optimization algorithms for GAP in terms of simplicity and runtime while the approximation ratio closely matches the best approximation ratio given for GAP when all inputs are publicly known.
We study the complexity of the classic Hylland-Zeckhauser scheme [HZ79] for one-sided matching markets. We show that the problem of finding an $epsilon$-approximate equilibrium in the HZ scheme is PPAD-hard, and this holds even when $epsilon$ is polynomially small and when each agent has no more than four distinct utility values. Our hardness result, when combined with the PPAD membership result of [VY21], resolves the approximation complexity of the HZ scheme. We also show that the problem of approximating the optimal social welfare (the weight of the matching) achievable by HZ equilibria within a certain constant factor is NP-hard.
Martin Weitzmans Pandoras problem furnishes the mathematical basis for optimal search theory in economics. Nearly 40 years later, Laura Doval introduced a version of the problem in which the searcher is not obligated to pay the cost of inspecting an alternatives value before selecting it. Unlike the original Pandoras problem, the version with nonobligatory inspection cannot be solved optimally by any simple ranking-based policy, and it is unknown whether there exists any polynomial-time algorithm to compute the optimal policy. This motivates the study of approximately optimal policies that are simple and computationally efficient. In this work we provide the first non-trivial approximation guarantees for this problem. We introduce a family of committing policies such that it is computationally easy to find and implement the optimal committing policy. We prove that the optimal committing policy is guaranteed to approximate the fully optimal policy within a $1-frac1e = 0.63ldots$ factor, and for the special case of two boxes we improve this factor to 4/5 and show that this approximation is tight for the class of committing policies.
Computational advertising has been studied to design efficient marketing strategies that maximize the number of acquired customers. In an increased competitive market, however, a market leader (a leader) requires the acquisition of new customers as well as the retention of her loyal customers because there often exists a competitor (a follower) who tries to attract customers away from the market leader. In this paper, we formalize a new model called the Stackelberg budget allocation game with a bipartite influence model by extending a budget allocation problem over a bipartite graph to a Stackelberg game. To find a strong Stackelberg equilibrium, a standard solution concept of the Stackelberg game, we propose two algorithms: an approximation algorithm with provable guarantees and an efficient heuristic algorithm. In addition, for a special case where customers are disjoint, we propose an exact algorithm based on linear programming. Our experiments using real-world datasets demonstrate that our algorithms outperform a baseline algorithm even when the follower is a powerful competitor.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
