Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2013/iii/paper-39/4/c/solution

Let be the optimal expected value before seeing the next offer when rounds remain. With one round left the offer must be accepted, so . For , observing gives a choice between now and the continuation value . Independence of future uniform distributions makes that continuation value independent of past offers. Thus the uniform-offer stopping recursion is
It gives and . The Snell envelope rule therefore yields the explicit strategy
Only rounds actually reached are played. At a threshold the two actions have identical continuation expected value; either convention is optimal, and exact equality has probability zero. The optimal expected payout before the first offer is

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