Prophet inequalities for parallel processes

Generalizations of prophet inequalities for single sequences are obtained for optimal stopping of several parallel sequences of independent random variables. For example, if {X_{i, j}, 1 ≤ i ≤ n, 1 ≤ j < ∞} are independent non-negative random variables, then

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and this bound is best possible. Applications are made to comparisons of the optimal expected returns of various alternative methods of stopping of parallel processes.