Mechanisms for Multi-Unit Auctions
Computer Science and Game Theory
2014-01-17 v1
Abstract
We present an incentive-compatible polynomial-time approximation scheme for multi-unit auctions with general k-minded player valuations. The mechanism fully optimizes over an appropriately chosen sub-range of possible allocations and then uses VCG payments over this sub-range. We show that obtaining a fully polynomial-time incentive-compatible approximation scheme, at least using VCG payments, is NP-hard. For the case of valuations given by black boxes, we give a polynomial-time incentive-compatible 2-approximation mechanism and show that no better is possible, at least using VCG payments.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1401.3834,
title = {Mechanisms for Multi-Unit Auctions},
author = {Shahar Dobzinski and Noam Nisan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.3834},
year = {2014}
}