This paper studies the class of denumerable-armed (i.e., finite- or countably infinite-armed) Bandit problems with independent arms and geometric discounting over an infinite horizon in which each arm generates rewards according to one of a finite number of distributions. The authors derive certain continuity and curvature properties of the Gittins Index, and provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which this index characterizes the optimal strategies. They then show that at each point in time the arm selected by an optimal strategy will, with positive probability, remain an optimal selection forever. Copyright 1992 by The Econometric Society.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Article provided by Econometric Society in its journal Econometrica.
Volume (Year): 60 (1992) Issue (Month): 5 (September) Pages: 1071-96 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)