Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/86719 
Year of Publication: 
2010
Series/Report no.: 
Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper No. 10-092/4
Publisher: 
Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam and Rotterdam
Abstract: 
A version of the classical secretary problem is studied, in which one is interested in selecting one of the b best out of a group of n differently ranked persons who are presented one by one in a random order. It is assumed that b is bigger than or equal to 1 is a preassigned number. It is known, already for a long time, that for the optimal policy one needs to compute b position thresholds, for instance via backwards induction. In this paper we study approximate policies, that use just a single or a double position threshold, albeit in conjunction with a level rank. We give exact and asymptotic (as n goes to infinity) results, which show that the double-level policy is an extremely accurate approximation.
Subjects: 
Secretary Problem
Dynamic Programming
Approximate Policies
JEL: 
C60
C61
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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