Related papers: Bayesian Optimal Auctions via Multi- to Single-age…
We show that the multiplicative weight update method provides a simple recipe for designing and analyzing optimal Bayesian Incentive Compatible (BIC) auctions, and reduces the time complexity of the problem to pseudo-polynomial in…
We study the optimal auction design problem when bidders' preferences follow the maxmin expected utility model. We suppose that each bidder's set of priors consists of beliefs close to the seller's belief, where "closeness" is defined by a…
We consider revenue-optimal mechanism design in the interdimensional setting, where one dimension is the 'value' of the buyer, and one is a 'type' that captures some auxiliary information. One setting is the FedEx Problem, for which FGKK…
This paper studies a joint design problem where a seller can design both the signal structures for the agents to learn their values, and the allocation and payment rules for selling the item. In his seminal work, Myerson (1981) shows how to…
Motivated by the problem of market power in electricity markets, we introduced in previous works a mechanism for simplified markets of two agents with linear cost. In standard procurement auctions, the market power resulting from the…
We study the efficiency of simple combinatorial auctions for the allocation of a set of items to a set of agents, with private subadditive valuation functions and budget constraints. The class we consider includes all auctions that allocate…
We efficiently solve the optimal multi-dimensional mechanism design problem for independent bidders with arbitrary demand constraints when either the number of bidders is a constant or the number of items is a constant. In the first…
Randomized mechanisms, which map a set of bids to a probability distribution over outcomes rather than a single outcome, are an important but ill-understood area of computational mechanism design. We investigate the role of randomized…
This paper describes a study of agent bidding strategies, assuming combinatorial valuations for complementary and substitutable goods, in three auction environments: sequential auctions, simultaneous auctions, and the Trading Agent…
We study a class of procurement auctions with a budget constraint, where an auctioneer is interested in buying resources or services from a set of agents. Ideally, the auctioneer would like to select a subset of the resources so as to…
We consider budget feasible mechanisms for procurement auctions with additive valuation functions. For the divisible case, where agents can be allocated fractionally, there exists an optimal mechanism with approximation guarantee $e/(e-1)$…
For Bayesian combinatorial auctions, we present a general framework for approximately reducing the mechanism design problem for multiple buyers to single buyer sub-problems. Our framework can be applied to any setting which roughly…
As computational agents are developed for increasingly complicated e-commerce applications, the complexity of the decisions they face demands advances in artificial intelligence techniques. For example, an agent representing a seller in an…
In a single-parameter mechanism design problem, a provider is looking to sell a service to a group of potential buyers. Each buyer $i$ has a private value $v_i$ for receiving the service and a feasibility constraint restricts which sets of…
We study a simple problem of allocating common-value goods. The designer seeks to allocate the goods to as many unit-demand agents as possible without monetary transfers, while agents, who possess partial private information about the…
The optimal pricing problem is a fundamental problem that arises in combinatorial auctions. Suppose that there is one seller who has indivisible items and multiple buyers who want to purchase a combination of the items. The seller wants to…
We consider the problem of maximizing revenue for a monopolist offering multiple items to multiple heterogeneous buyers. We develop a simple mechanism that obtains a constant factor approximation under the assumption that the buyers' values…
Finding optimal solutions for multi-unit combinatorial auctions is a hard problem and finding approximations to the optimal solution is also hard. We investigate the use of Branch-and-Bound techniques: they require both a way to bound from…
We study the classic single-item auction setting of Myerson, but under the assumption that the buyers' values for the item are distributed over finite supports. Using strong LP duality and polyhedral theory, we rederive various key results…
Budget-feasible procurement has been a major paradigm in mechanism design since its introduction by Singer (2010). An auctioneer (buyer) with a strict budget constraint is interested in buying goods or services from a group of strategic…