How To Take An Exam If You Must: Decision Under Deadline

Hsueh-Ling Huynh and Sumon Majumdar
Additional contact information
Hsueh-Ling Huynh: Boston University

No 1119, Working Paper from Economics Department, Queen's University

Abstract: This paper uses the example of an exam to model multi-dimensional search under a deadline. When the dimension is two, an order-invariance property allows simple characterization of the optimal search policy. Behavior is shown to be highly sensitive to changes in the deadline, and a wide variety of policies can be rationalized (as being optimal) as the length of the deadline increases. This is contrasted with behavior under the traditional case of geometric discounting, in which a similar sensitivity to changes in the discount factor cannot hold. For dimensions higher than two, the invariance principle does not hold; this increases complexity of the problem of finding the optimal search policy.

Keywords: Deadline; search; invariance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 D81 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2006-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/qed_wp_1119.pdf First version 2006 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qed:wpaper:1119

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper from Economics Department, Queen's University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Babcock ().