Optimal Strategies for Selling an Asset.

Abstract

This report considers the problem of selling an asset on the open market. The seller receives a random sequence of price offers, which may arrive either periodically or randomly over time. After each offer is received, the seller must decide whether or not to sell, weighing the possibility of obtaining a better offer against the cost of waiting. A number of authors have established the properties of optimal selling policies when the distribution of offers is known and the offers are received periodically. This report investigates the conditions under which these same properties hold for an unknown offer distribution which is updated as successive offers are received. The selling problem has strong similarities but also important differences with the problem of purchasing a commodity subject to an unknown price distribution; and both arise in situations other than buying or selling an asset. Some applications of the model in quality assurance and other settings are briefly discussed. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1980
Accession Number
ADA095964

Entities

People

  • David A. Butler
  • Donald B. Rosenfield
  • Roy D. Shapiro

Organizations

  • Oregon State University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Classification
  • Computer Programming
  • Confidence Limits
  • Data Science
  • Goodness Of Fit Tests
  • Information Science
  • Integer Programming
  • Maximum Likelihood Estimation
  • Normal Distribution
  • Operations Research
  • Probability
  • Random Variables
  • Regression Analysis
  • State Governments
  • Statistics
  • Surveys

Readers

  • Industrial Economics
  • Statistical inference.
  • Theoretical Analysis.