Adaptive Strategies for Dynamic Pricing Agents

Dynamic Pricing (DyP) is a form of Revenue Management in which the price of a (usually) perishable good is changed over time to increase revenue. It is an effective method that has become even more relevant and useful with the emergence of Internet firms and the possibility of readily and frequently updating prices. In this paper a new approach to DyP is presented. We design adaptive dynamic pricing strategies and optimize their parameters with an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) offline while the strategies can deal with stochastic market dynamics quickly online. We design two adaptive heuristic dynamic pricing strategies in a duopoly where each firm has a finite inventory of a single type of good. We consider two cases, one in which the average of a customer population’s stochastic valuation for each of the goods is constant throughout the selling horizon and one in which the average customer valuation for each good is changed according to a random Brownian motion. We also design an agent-based software framework for simulating various dynamic pricing strategies in agent-based marketplaces with multiple firms in a bounded time horizon. We use an EA to optimize the parameters for each of the pricing strategies in each of the settings and compare the strategies with other strategies from the literature. We also perform sensitivity a analysis and show that the optimized strategies work well even when used in settings with varied demand functions

Adaptive Strategies for Dynamic Pricing Agents

Dynamic Pricing (DyP) is a form of Revenue Management in which the price of a (usually) perishable good is changed over time to increase revenue. It is an effective method that has become even more relevant and useful with the emergence of Internet firms and the possibility of readily and frequently updating prices. In this paper a new approach to DyP is presented. We design adaptive dynamic pricing strategies and optimize their parameters with an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) offline while the strategies can deal with stochastic market dynamics quickly online. We design two adaptive heuristic dynamic pricing strategies in a duopoly where each firm has a finite inventory of a single type of good. We consider two cases, one in which the average of a customer population's stochastic valuation for each of the goods is constant throughout the selling horizon and one in which the average customer valuation for each good is changed according to a random Brownian motion. We also design an agent-based software framework for simulating various dynamic pricing strategies in agent based marketplaces with multiple firms in a bounded time horizon. We use an EA to optimize the parameters for each of the pricing strategies in each of the settings and compare the strategies with other strategies from the literature. We also perform sensitivity analysis and show that the optimized strategies work well even when used in settings with varied demand functions

Adaptive Strategies for Dynamic Pricing Agents

Dynamic Pricing (DyP) is a form of Revenue Management in which the price of a (usually) perishable good is changed over time to increase revenue. It is an effective method that has become even more relevant and useful with the emergence of Internet firms and the possibility of readily and frequently updating prices. In this paper a new approach to DyP is presented. We design adaptive dynamic pricing strategies and optimize their parameters with an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) offline while the strategies can deal with stochastic market dynamics quickly online. We design two adaptive heuristic dynamic pricing strategies in a duopoly where each firm has a finite inventory of a single type of good. We consider two cases, one in which the average of a customer population’s stochastic valuation for each of the goods is constant throughout the selling horizon and one in which the average customer valuation for each good is changed according to a random Brownian motion. We also design an agent-based software framework for simulating various dynamic pricing strategies in agent-based marketplaces with multiple firms in a bounded time horizon. We use an EA to optimize the parameters for each of the pricing strategies in each of the settings and compare the strategies with other strategies from the literature. We also perform sensitivity a analysis and show that the optimized strategies work well even when used in settings with varied demand functions

An Adaptive Model on Asset Pricing and Wealth Dynamics with Heterogeneous Trading Strategies

This paper develops an adaptive model on asset pricing and wealth dynamic of a financial market with heterogeneous agents and examines the profitability of momentum and contrarian trading strategies. In order to characterize asset price, wealth dynamics and rational adaptiveness arising from the interaction of heterogeneous agents with CRRA utility, an adaptive discrete time equilibrium model in terms of return ad wealth proportions (among heterogeneous representative agents) is established. Taking trend followers and contrarians as the main hetergeneous agents in the model, the profitability of momentum and contrarian trading strategies is analyzed. Our results show the capability of the model to characterize some of the existing evidence on many of anomailies observed in financial markets, including the profitability of momentum trading strategies over short time intervals, rational adaptiveness of agents, overconfidence and underreaction, overreaction and herd behavior, excess volatility, and volatility clustering.asset pricing; wealth dynamics; hetergeneity; adaptiveness; profitability; momentum trading strategies; contrarian trading strategies

Heterogeneous Agents Models: two simple examples, forthcoming In: Lines, M. (ed.) Nonlinear Dynamical Systems in Economics, CISM Courses and Lectures, Springer, 2005, pp.131-164.

These notes review two simple heterogeneous agent models in economics and finance. The first is a cobweb model with rational versus naive agents introduced in Brock and Hommes (1997). The second is an asset pricing model with fundamentalists versus technical traders introduced in Brock and Hommes (1998). Agents are boundedly rational and switch between different trading strategies, based upon an evolutionary fitness measure given by realized past profits. Evolutionary switching creates a nonlinearity in the dynamics. Rational routes to randomness, that is, bifurcation routes to complicated dynamical behaviour occur when agents become more sensitive to differences in evolutionary fitness.

On the Role of Memory in an Asset Pricing Model with Heterogeneous Beliefs

The paper discusses the role of memory in an asset pricing model with heterogeneous beliefs. In particular, we were interested in how memory in the fitness measure affects the stability of evolutionary adaptive systems and the survival of technical trading. In order to obtain an insight into this matter, two cases were analyzed: a two-type case of fundamentalists versus contrarians and a three-type case of fundamentalists versus opposite biases. It has been established that increasing memory strength has a stabilizing effect on dynamics, though it is not able to eliminate speculative traders’ short-run profit-seeking behaviour from the market. Furthermore, opposite biases do not seem to lead to chaotic dynamics, even when there are no costs for fundamentalists. Apparently some (strong) trend extrapolator beliefs are needed in order to trigger chaotic asset price fluctuations.asset pricing, biased beliefs, contrarians, fitness measure, fundamentalists, heterogeneous beliefs, memory strength, stability

Complex evolutionary systems in behavioral finance

Traditional finance is built on the rationality paradigm. This chapter discusses simple models from an alternative approach in which financial markets are viewed as complex evolutionary systems. Agents are boundedly rational and base their investment decisions upon market forecasting heuristics. Prices and beliefs about future prices co-evolve over time with mutual feedback. Strategy choice is driven by evolutionary selection, so that agents tend to adopt strategies that were successful in the past. Calibration of "simple complexity models" with heterogeneous expectations to real financial market data and laboratory experiments with human subjects are also discussed.

A nonlinear structural model for volatility clustering

A simple nonlinear structural model of endogenous belief heterogeneity is proposed. News about fundamentals is an IID random process, but nevertheless volatility clustering occurs as an endogenous phenomenon caused by the interaction between different types of traders, fundamentalists and technical analysts. The belief types are driven by adaptive, evolutionary dynamics according to the success of the prediction strategies as measured by accumulated realized profits, conditioned upon price deviations from the rational expectations fundamental price. Asset prices switch irregularly between two different regimes --periods of small price fluctuations and periods of large price changes triggered by random news and reinforced by technical trading -- thus, creating time varying volatility similar to that observed in real financial data.

Efficient Methods for Automated Multi-Issue Negotiation: Negotiating over a Two-Part Tariff

In this article, we consider the novel approach of a seller and customer negotiating bilaterally about a two-part tariff, using autonomous software agents. An advantage of this approach is that win-win opportunities can be generated while keeping the problem of preference elicitation as simple as possible. We develop bargaining strategies that software agents can use to conduct the actual bilateral negotiation on behalf of their owners. We present a decomposition of bargaining strategies into concession strategies and Pareto-efficient-search methods: Concession and Pareto-search strategies focus on the conceding and win-win aspect of bargaining, respectively. An important technical contribution of this article lies in the development of two Pareto-search methods. Computer experiments show, for various concession strategies, that the respective use of these two Pareto-search methods by the two negotiators results in very efficient bargaining outcomes while negotiators concede the amount specified by their concession strategy