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Doubly Fair Dynamic Pricing

Jianyu Xu, Dan Qiao, Yu-Xiang Wang

arXiv 23 Sep 2022 · Machine Learning · 1 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2209.11837 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

We study the problem of online dynamic pricing with two types of fairness constraints: a "procedural fairness" which requires the proposed prices to be equal in expectation among different groups, and a "substantive fairness" which requires the accepted prices to be equal in expectation among different groups. A policy that is simultaneously procedural and substantive fair is referred to as "doubly fair". We show that a doubly fair policy must be random to have higher revenue than the best trivial policy that assigns the same price to different groups. In a two-group setting, we propose an online learning algorithm for the 2-group pricing problems that achieves $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$ regret, zero procedural unfairness and $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$ substantive unfairness over $T$ rounds of learning. We also prove two lower bounds showing that these results on regret and unfairness are both information-theoretically optimal up to iterated logarithmic factors. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first dynamic pricing algorithm that learns to price while satisfying two fairness constraints at the same time.

Citation extraction

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Kleinberg, R. and Leighton, T (2003) The value of knowing a demand curve: Bounds on regret for online posted-price auctions0.8558462%
2Cohen, M. C., Elmachtoub, A. N., and Lei, X (2022) Price discrimination with fairness constraints0.81142100%
3Chapuis, J. M (2012) Price fairness versus pricing fairness0.7374450%
4Eyster, E., Madarász, K., and Michaillat, P (2021) Pricing under fairness concerns0.7373367%
5Richards, T. J., Liaukonyte, J., and Streletskaya, N. A (2016) Personalized pricing and price fairness0.7373367%
6Wang, Y., Chen, B., and Simchi-Levi, D (2021) Multimodal dynamic pricing self0.6444250%
7Chen, X., Zhang, X., and Zhou, Y (2021) Fairness-aware online price discrimination with nonparametric demand models0.6443267%
8Auer, P., Cesa-Bianchi, N., Freund, Y., and Schapire, R. E (2002) The nonstochastic multiarmed bandit problem0.64422100%
9Kaufmann, P. J., Ortmeyer, G., and Smith, N. C (1991) Fairness in consumer pricing0.64422100%
10Javanmard, A. and Nazerzadeh, H (2019) Dynamic pricing in high-dimensions0.5114225%

Showing the top 10 of 41 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Pricing with Contextual Elasticity and Heteroscedastic Valuation0.00011
2Optimal Contextual Pricing under Agnostic Non-Lipschitz Demand0.00011