The Best Choice Problem under Ambiguity

We model and solve Best Choice Problems in the multiple prior framework: An ambiguity averse decision maker aims to choose the best among a fixed number of applicants that appear sequentially in a random order. The decision faces ambiguity about the probabil-ity that a candidate – a relatively top applicant — is actually best among all applicants. We show that our model covers the classical secretary problem, but also other interesting classes of problems. We provide a closed form solution of the problem for time-consistent pri-ors using minimax backward induction. As in the classical case the derived stopping strategy is simple. Ambiguity can lead to substantial differences to the classical threshold rule. 1