Rank-Guaranteed Auctions
Theoretical Economics
2024-08-23 v1 Computer Science and Game Theory
Abstract
We propose a combinatorial ascending auction that is "approximately" optimal, requiring minimal rationality to achieve this level of optimality, and is robust to strategic and distributional uncertainties. Specifically, the auction is rank-guaranteed, meaning that for any menu M and any valuation profile, the ex-post revenue is guaranteed to be at least as high as the highest revenue achievable from feasible allocations, taking the (|M|+ 1)th-highest valuation for each bundle as the price. Our analysis highlights a crucial aspect of combinatorial auction design, namely, the design of menus. We provide simple and approximately optimal menus in various settings.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2408.12001,
title = {Rank-Guaranteed Auctions},
author = {Wei He and Jiangtao Li and Weijie Zhong},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.12001},
year = {2024}
}