CMS (2007) 4:89–111 DOI 10.1007/s10287-006-0029-5 ORIGINAL PAPER Optimal stopping problems by two or more decision makers: a survey Fouad Ben Abdelaziz · Saoussen Krichen Published online: 16 November 2006 © Springer-Verlag 2006 Abstract A review of the optimal stopping problem with more than a single decision maker (DM) is presented in this paper. We classify the existing litera- ture according to the arrival of the offers, the utility of the DMs, the length of the sequence of offers, the nature of the game and the number of offers to be selected. We enumerate various definitions for this problem and describe some dynamic approaches. Keywords Dynamic programming · Game theory · Group decisions · Optimal stopping 1 Introduction The optimal stopping problem (OSP) is a dynamic optimization problem incre- asingly studied in the literature. It models various practical applications as the problem of purchasing assets in stock exchanges, the interview of a known number of people for a job and the selection of projects. The basic OSP involves a decision maker (DM) who observes a stream of n offers sequentially, one by Fouad Ben Abdelaziz is on leave from the Institut Superieur de Gestion, University of Tunis, Tunisia e-mail: foued.benabdelaz@isg.rnu.tn. F. Ben Abdelaziz (B ) College of Business Administration University of Dubai, PO. Box 14143 Dubai, UAE e-mail: fabdelaziz@ud.ac.ae S. Krichen LARODEC Laboratory, Institut Supérieur de Gestion, University of Tunis, 41 Rue de la Liberté, Le Bardo 2000, Tunisia e-mail: saoussen.krichen@isg.rnu.tn