Optimal Stopping with Interdependent Values
Simon Mauras, Divyarthi Mohan, Rebecca Reiffenhäuser · 2024
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.