-
作者：Xiong, Yi; Chen, Ningyuan; Gao, Xuefeng; Zhou, Xiang
作者单位：Chinese University of Hong Kong; University of Toronto
摘要：We study the model-based undiscounted reinforcement learning for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). The oracle we consider is the optimal policy of the POMDP with a known environment in terms of the average reward over an infinite horizon. We propose a learning algorithm for this problem, building on spectral method-of-moments estimations for hidden Markov models, the belief error control in POMDPs and upper confidence bound methods for online learning. We establish a reg...
-
作者：Jiao, Yifan; Tang, Christopher S.; Wang, Jingqi
作者单位：University of Hong Kong; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen; The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
摘要：In the context of free-to-play (FTP) mobile games, this paper seeks to examine one question: Which factors affect a player's play duration or in-app purchases (of virtual items)? This research question has not been examined in the research literature. But it is an important one because the revenue of an FTP game developer is based on in-app ads watched by players (which depend on play duration) and in-app purchases. Using different regression models to analyze weekly data associated with 100,0...
-
作者：Corbett, Charles J.; Narayanan, Sriram
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; Michigan State University; Michigan State University's Broad College of Business
-
作者：Qiu, Liangfei; Liu, Ruiqi; Jin, Yong; Ding, Chao; Fan, Yangyang; Yeung, Andy C. L.
作者单位：State University System of Florida; University of Florida; Hong Kong Polytechnic University; University of Hong Kong; Hong Kong Polytechnic University
摘要：As one of the most important financial innovations in the last two decades, credit default swap (CDS) contracts have been initiated and actively traded in the market to hedge against credit risks. However, little is known about how these financial innovations affect an underlying firm's operations. In this empirical study, we find that an underlying firm's operational efficiency is significantly improved with the inception of CDS trading. Our results are robust to multiple causal identificatio...
-
作者：Miao, Sentao; Chen, Xi; Chao, Xiuli; Liu, Jiaxi; Zhang, Yidong
作者单位：McGill University; New York University; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; Amazon.com; Alibaba Group
摘要：We consider a context-based dynamic pricing problem of online products, which have low sales. Sales data from Alibaba, a major global online retailer, illustrate the prevalence of low-sale products. For these products, existing single-product dynamic pricing algorithms do not work well due to insufficient data samples. To address this challenge, we propose pricing policies that concurrently perform clustering over product demand and set individual pricing decisions on the fly. By clustering da...
-
作者：Bountali, Olga; Burnetas, Apostolos; Ormeci, Lerzan
作者单位：University of Toronto; National & Kapodistrian University of Athens; Koc University
摘要：Families that visit theme parks like Disneyland are debating on two aspects when they try to determine whether they prefer to join an activity of interest or would rather balk: (1) Is it better to join or balk as a group or allow the flexibility to get separated and jettison some members? and (2) Will it make any difference if they set a ranking among themselves beforehand as to who will be served first, second, etc.? We tackle the effect of flexibility and ranking knowledge and answer the abo...
