IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cla/levarc/814577000000000259.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Decision Making in Uncertain and Changing Environments

Author

Listed:
  • Karl H. Schlag
  • Andriy Zapechelnyuk

Abstract

We consider an agent who has to repeatedly make choices in an uncertain and changing environment, who has full information of the past, who discounts future payoffs, but who has no prior. We provide a learning algorithm that performs almost as well as the best of a given finite number of experts or benchmark strategies and does so at any point in time, provided the agent is sufficiently patient. The key is to find the appropriate degree of forgetting distant past. Standard learning algorithms that treat recent and distant past equally do not have the sequential epsilon optimality property.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Karl H. Schlag & Andriy Zapechelnyuk, 2009. "Decision Making in Uncertain and Changing Environments," Levine's Working Paper Archive 814577000000000259, David K. Levine.
    • Handle: RePEc:cla:levarc:814577000000000259
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.dklevine.com/archive/refs4814577000000000259.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sergiu Hart, 2013. "Adaptive Heuristics," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Simple Adaptive Strategies From Regret-Matching to Uncoupled Dynamics, chapter 11, pages 253-287, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Foster, Dean P. & Vohra, Rakesh, 1999. "Regret in the On-Line Decision Problem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 29(1-2), pages 7-35, October.
    3. Fudenberg, Drew & Levine, David K., 1995. "Consistency and cautious fictitious play," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 19(5-7), pages 1065-1089.
    4. Sergiu Hart & Andreu Mas-Colell, 2013. "A Simple Adaptive Procedure Leading To Correlated Equilibrium," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Simple Adaptive Strategies From Regret-Matching to Uncoupled Dynamics, chapter 2, pages 17-46, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Sergiu Hart & Andreu Mas-Colell, 2013. "A General Class Of Adaptive Strategies," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Simple Adaptive Strategies From Regret-Matching to Uncoupled Dynamics, chapter 3, pages 47-76, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Roth, Alvin E. & Erev, Ido, 1995. "Learning in extensive-form games: Experimental data and simple dynamic models in the intermediate term," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 164-212.
    7. Lehrer, Ehud, 2003. "A wide range no-regret theorem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 101-115, January.
    8. Fudenberg, Drew & Levine, David K., 1999. "Conditional Universal Consistency," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 29(1-2), pages 104-130, October.
    9. Mailath, George J. & Postlewaite, Andrew & Samuelson, Larry, 2005. "Contemporaneous perfect epsilon-equilibria," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 126-140, October.
    10. Sergiu Hart & Andreu Mas-Colell, 2013. "A Reinforcement Procedure Leading To Correlated Equilibrium," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Simple Adaptive Strategies From Regret-Matching to Uncoupled Dynamics, chapter 4, pages 77-98, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    11. Lehrer, Ehud & Solan, Eilon, 2009. "Approachability with bounded memory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 995-1004, July.
    12. Erev, Ido & Roth, Alvin E, 1998. "Predicting How People Play Games: Reinforcement Learning in Experimental Games with Unique, Mixed Strategy Equilibria," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 848-881, September.
    13. , P. & , Peyton, 2006. "Regret testing: learning to play Nash equilibrium without knowing you have an opponent," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 1(3), pages 341-367, September.
    14. Dean P. Foster & Rakesh V. Vohra, 1993. "A Randomization Rule for Selecting Forecasts," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 41(4), pages 704-709, August.
    15. Foster, Dean P. & Vohra, Rakesh V., 1997. "Calibrated Learning and Correlated Equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 21(1-2), pages 40-55, October.
    16. Radner, Roy, 1980. "Collusive behavior in noncooperative epsilon-equilibria of oligopolies with long but finite lives," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 136-154, April.
    17. Freund, Yoav & Schapire, Robert E., 1999. "Adaptive Game Playing Using Multiplicative Weights," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 29(1-2), pages 79-103, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. William A. Brock & Steven N. Durlauf, 2015. "On Sturdy Policy Evaluation," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(S2), pages 447-473.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schlag, Karl H. & Zapechelnyuk, Andriy, 2017. "Dynamic benchmark targeting," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 145-169.
    2. Germano, Fabrizio & Lugosi, Gabor, 2007. "Global Nash convergence of Foster and Young's regret testing," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 135-154, July.
    3. Mannor, Shie & Shimkin, Nahum, 2008. "Regret minimization in repeated matrix games with variable stage duration," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 227-258, May.
    4. Karl Schlag & Andriy Zapechelnyuk, 2010. "On the Impossibility of Regret Minimization in Repeated Games," Working Papers 676, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    5. Sergiu Hart & Andreu Mas-Colell, 2013. "A Simple Adaptive Procedure Leading To Correlated Equilibrium," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Simple Adaptive Strategies From Regret-Matching to Uncoupled Dynamics, chapter 2, pages 17-46, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Michel Benaïm & Josef Hofbauer & Sylvain Sorin, 2006. "Stochastic Approximations and Differential Inclusions, Part II: Applications," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(4), pages 673-695, November.
    7. Andriy Zapechelnyuk, 2009. "Limit Behavior of No-regret Dynamics," Discussion Papers 21, Kyiv School of Economics.
    8. Viossat, Yannick & Zapechelnyuk, Andriy, 2013. "No-regret dynamics and fictitious play," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(2), pages 825-842.
    9. Eric Friedman & Scott Shenker & Amy Greenwald, 1998. "Learning in Networks Contexts: Experimental Results from Simulations," Departmental Working Papers 199825, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    10. Foster, Dean P. & Hart, Sergiu, 2018. "Smooth calibration, leaky forecasts, finite recall, and Nash dynamics," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 271-293.
    11. Du, Ye & Lehrer, Ehud, 2020. "Constrained no-regret learning," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 16-24.
    12. Schlag, Karl & Zapechelnyuk, Andriy, 2012. "On the impossibility of achieving no regrets in repeated games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 153-158.
    13. Karl Schlag & Andriy Zapechelnyuk, 2010. "On the Impossibility of Regret Minimization in Repeated Games," Working Papers 676, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    14. Rene Saran & Roberto Serrano, 2012. "Regret Matching with Finite Memory," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 160-175, March.
    15. Sandroni, Alvaro & Smorodinsky, Rann, 2004. "Belief-based equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 157-171, April.
    16. Sergiu Hart & Andreu Mas-Colell, 2013. "A General Class Of Adaptive Strategies," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Simple Adaptive Strategies From Regret-Matching to Uncoupled Dynamics, chapter 3, pages 47-76, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    17. Foster, Dean P. & Young, H. Peyton, 2003. "Learning, hypothesis testing, and Nash equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 73-96, October.
    18. repec:hal:wpaper:hal-00713871 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Stoltz, Gilles & Lugosi, Gabor, 2007. "Learning correlated equilibria in games with compact sets of strategies," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 187-208, April.
    20. Dean P Foster & Peyton Young, 2006. "Regret Testing Leads to Nash Equilibrium," Levine's Working Paper Archive 784828000000000676, David K. Levine.
    21. Ehud Lehrer & Eilon Solan, 2007. "Learning to play partially-specified equilibrium," Levine's Working Paper Archive 122247000000001436, David K. Levine.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C44 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Operations Research; Statistical Decision Theory
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cla:levarc:814577000000000259. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: David K. Levine (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.dklevine.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.