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Related papers: The Complexity of Optimal Mechanism Design

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Optimal mechanisms have been provided in quite general multi-item settings, as long as each bidder's type distribution is given explicitly by listing every type in the support along with its associated probability. In the implicit setting,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-03-09 Constantinos Daskalakis , Alan Deckelbaum , Christos Tzamos

This paper reexamines the classic problem of revenue maximization in single-item auctions with $n$ buyers under the lens of the robust optimization framework. The celebrated Myerson's mechanism is the format that maximizes the seller's…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-09-16 Nick Gravin , Zhiqi Wang

We study revenue maximization in multi-item auctions, where bidders have subadditive valuations over independent items. Providing a simple mechanism that is approximately revenue-optimal in this setting is a major open problem in mechanism…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-10-13 Yang Cai , Ziyun Chen , Jinzhao Wu

We study a classical Bayesian mechanism design problem where a seller is selling multiple items to multiple buyers. We consider the case where the seller has costs to produce the items, and these costs are private information to the seller.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-04-20 Yang Cai , Mingfei Zhao

In this paper we consider multidimensional mechanism design problem for selling discrete substitutable items to a group of buyers. Previous work on this problem mostly focus on stochastic description of valuations used by the seller.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-01-05 Maciej Drwal

In the design and analysis of revenue-maximizing auctions, auction performance is typically measured with respect to a prior distribution over inputs. The most obvious source for such a distribution is past data. The goal is to understand…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-11-30 Richard Cole , Tim Roughgarden

We provide a reduction from revenue maximization to welfare maximization in multi-dimensional Bayesian auctions with arbitrary (possibly combinatorial) feasibility constraints and independent bidders with arbitrary (possibly combinatorial)…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-07-25 Yang Cai , Constantinos Daskalakis , S. Matthew Weinberg

When agents with independent priors bid for a single item, Myerson's optimal auction maximizes expected revenue, whereas Vickrey's second-price auction optimizes social welfare. We address the natural question of trade-offs between the two…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-05-15 Ilias Diakonikolas , Christos Papadimitriou , George Pierrakos , Yaron Singer

We study the problem of selling $n$ items to a single buyer with an additive valuation function. We consider the valuation of the items to be correlated, i.e., desirabilities of the buyer for the items are not drawn independently. Ideally,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-07-23 MohammadHossein Bateni , Sina Dehghani , MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi , Saeed Seddighin

We consider the problem of designing revenue-optimal auctions for selling two items and bidders' valuations are independent among bidders but negatively correlated among items. In this paper, we obtain the closed-form optimal auction for…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-06-03 Pingzhong Tang , Zihe Wang

The current art in optimal combinatorial auctions is limited to handling the case of single units of multiple items, with each bidder bidding on exactly one bundle (single minded bidders). This paper extends the current art by proposing an…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2010-04-27 Sujit Gujar , Y Narahari

Finding the optimal (revenue-maximizing) mechanism to sell multiple items has been a prominent and notoriously difficult open problem. Existing work has mainly focused on deriving analytical results tailored to a particular class of…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-01-09 Kento Hashimoto , Keita Kuwahara , Reo Nonaka

Myerson's seminal characterization of the revenue-optimal auction for a single item \cite{myerson1981optimal} remains a cornerstone of mechanism design. However, generalizing this framework to multi-item settings has proven exceptionally…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-08 Marios Mertzanidis , Athina Terzoglou

A sequence of recent studies show that even in the simple setting of a single seller and a single buyer with additive, independent valuations over $m$ items, the revenue-maximizing mechanism is prohibitively complex. This problem has been…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-01-10 Michal Feldman , Ophir Friedler , Aviad Rubinstein

Multi-item mechanisms can be very complex offering many different bundles to the buyer that could even be randomized. Such complexity is thought to be necessary as the revenue gaps between randomized and deterministic mechanisms, or…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-07-03 Shuchi Chawla , Yifeng Teng , Christos Tzamos

Generating good revenue is one of the most important problems in Bayesian auction design, and many (approximately) optimal dominant-strategy incentive compatible (DSIC) Bayesian mechanisms have been constructed for various auction settings.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-08-07 Jing Chen , Bo Li , Yingkai Li , Pinyan Lu

We study the problem of multi-dimensional revenue maximization when selling $m$ items to a buyer that has additive valuations for them, drawn from a (possibly correlated) prior distribution. Unlike traditional Bayesian auction design, we…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-04-29 Yiannis Giannakopoulos , Diogo Poças , Alexandros Tsigonias-Dimitriadis

We consider the well known, and notoriously difficult, problem of a single revenue-maximizing seller selling two or more heterogeneous goods to a single buyer whose private values for the goods are drawn from a (possibly correlated) known…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-09-23 Sergiu Hart , Noam Nisan

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-11-24 Takanori Maehara , Yasushi Kawase , Hanna Sumita , Katsuya Tono , Ken-ichi Kawarabayashi

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2009-04-17 Patrick Briest , Shuchi Chawla , Robert Kleinberg , S. Matthew Weinberg