Moneyless strategy-proof mechanism on single-sinked policy domain: characterization and applications

We completely characterize deterministic strategy-proof and group strategy-proof mechanisms on single-sinked public policy domain. The single-sinked domain can be used to model any allocation problem where a single output must be chosen in an interval with the assumption that agents’ preferences have a single most loathful point (the sink) in the interval, and the preferences … Read more

A distribution-free risk-reward newsvendor model: Extending Scarf’s min-max order formula

Scarf’s min-max order formula for the distribution-free risk-neutral newsvendor problem is a classical result in the field of inventory management. The min-max order formula provides, in closed-form, the order quantity that maximizes the worst-case expected profit associated with the demand of a single product when only the mean and variance of the product’s demand distribution, … Read more

Simultaneous approximation of multi-criteria submodular function maximization

Recently there has been intensive interest on approximation of the NP-hard submodular maximization problem due to their theoretical and practical significance. In this work, we extend this line of research by focusing on the simultaneous approximation of multiple submodular function maximization. We address existence and nonexistence results for both deterministic and randomized approximation when the … Read more

Improved approximation algorithms for the facility location problems with linear/submodular penalty

We consider the facility location problem with submodular penalty (FLPSP) and the facility location problem with linear penalty (FLPLP), two extensions of the classical facility location problem (FLP). First, we introduce a general algorithmic framework for a class of covering problems with submodular penalty, extending the recent result of Geunes et al. [12] with linear … Read more

Improved bounds for the symmetric rendezvous search problem on the line

A notorious open problem in the field of rendezvous search is to decide the rendezvous value of the symmetric rendezvous search problem on the line, when the initial distance apart between the two players is 2. We show that the symmetric rendezvous value is within the interval (4.1520, 4.2574), which considerably improves the previous best … Read more

Extensions of Lo’s semiparametric bound for European call options

Computing semiparametric bounds for option prices is a widely studied pricing technique. In contrast to parametric pricing techniques, such as Monte-Carlo simulations, semiparametric pricing techniques do not re- quire strong assumptions about the underlying asset price distribution. We extend classical results in this area in two main directions. First, we derive closed-form semiparametric bounds for … Read more