Delegated Stochastic Probing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new framework called delegated stochastic probing, combining delegation and stochastic probing, and demonstrates how to design mechanisms with bounded loss in utility, connecting it to prophet inequalities.

Contribution

It develops a novel mechanism design framework for delegated stochastic probing and establishes constant-factor approximation mechanisms using generalized prophet inequalities.

Findings

Existence of constant-factor deterministic mechanisms.

Randomized mechanisms can outperform deterministic ones in some cases.

Connection between delegated stochastic probing and prophet inequalities.

Abstract

Delegation covers a broad class of problems in which a principal doesn't have the resources or expertise necessary to complete a task by themselves, so they delegate the task to an agent whose interests may not be aligned with their own. Stochastic probing describes problems in which we are tasked with maximizing expected utility by "probing" known distributions for acceptable solutions subject to certain constraints. In this work, we combine the concepts of delegation and stochastic probing into a single mechanism design framework which we term delegated stochastic probing. We study how much a principal loses by delegating a stochastic probing problem, compared to their utility in the non-delegated solution. Our model and results are heavily inspired by the work of Kleinberg and Kleinberg in "Delegated Search Approximates Efficient Search." Building on their work, we show that there exists a connection between delegated stochastic probing and generalized prophet inequalities, which provides us with constant-factor deterministic mechanisms for a large class of delegated stochastic probing problems. We also explore randomized mechanisms in a simple delegated probing setting, and show that they outperform deterministic mechanisms in some instances but not in the worst case.