English

Asymptotically Optimal Welfare of Posted Pricing for Multiple Items with MHR Distributions

Computer Science and Game Theory 2021-07-02 v1 Data Structures and Algorithms

Abstract

We consider the problem of posting prices for unit-demand buyers if all nn buyers have identically distributed valuations drawn from a distribution with monotone hazard rate. We show that even with multiple items asymptotically optimal welfare can be guaranteed. Our main results apply to the case that either a buyer's value for different items are independent or that they are perfectly correlated. We give mechanisms using dynamic prices that obtain a 1Θ(1logn)1 - \Theta \left( \frac{1}{\log n}\right)-fraction of the optimal social welfare in expectation. Furthermore, we devise mechanisms that only use static item prices and are 1Θ(logloglognlogn)1 - \Theta \left( \frac{\log\log\log n}{\log n}\right)-competitive compared to the optimal social welfare. As we show, both guarantees are asymptotically optimal, even for a single item and exponential distributions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2107.00526,
  title  = {Asymptotically Optimal Welfare of Posted Pricing for Multiple Items with MHR Distributions},
  author = {Alexander Braun and Matthias Buttkus and Thomas Kesselheim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.00526},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

To appear at the 29th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2021)