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Related papers: Optimal mechanisms with simple menus

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We study a seller who sells a single good to multiple bidders with uncertainty over the joint distribution of bidders' valuations, as well as bidders' higher-order beliefs about their opponents. The seller only knows the (possibly…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-02-16 Ethan Che

We consider the problem of designing an expected-revenue maximizing mechanism for allocating multiple non-perishable goods of $k$ varieties to flexible consumers over $T$ time steps. In our model, a random number of goods of each variety…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-07-08 Shiva Navabi , Ashutosh Nayyar

We study the problem of designing optimal auctions under restrictions on the set of permissible allocations. In addition to allowing us to restrict to deterministic mechanisms, we can also indirectly model non-additive valuations. We prove…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-06-07 Ian Kash , Rafael Frongillo

We study the problem of designing revenue-maximizing mechanisms for a selfish mediator who facilitates trade between a buyer and a seller. We consider a setting where the mediator does not have information advantage and the buyer's…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-10 Zhikang Fan , Weiran Shen , Shaojie Tang , Yao Wang

We study multi-item profit maximization when there is an underlying distribution over buyers' values. In practice, a full description of the distribution is typically unavailable, so we study the setting where the mechanism designer only…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-09 Maria-Florina Balcan , Tuomas Sandholm , Ellen Vitercik

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

We introduce a dynamic mechanism design problem in which the designer wants to offer for sale an item to an agent, and another item to the same agent at some point in the future. The agent's joint distribution of valuations for the two…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-05-22 Christos Papadimitriou , George Pierrakos , Christos-Alexandros Psomas , Aviad Rubinstein

We provide a new, much simplified and straightforward proof to a result of Pavlov [2011] regarding the revenue maximizing mechanism for selling two goods with uniformly i.i.d. valuations over intervals $[c,c+1]$, to an additive buyer. This…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-10-14 Yiannis Giannakopoulos

A multi-product monopolist faces a buyer who is privately informed about his valuations for the goods. As is well-known, optimal mechanisms are in general complicated, while simple mechanisms -- such as pure bundling or separate sales --…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-09-03 Mira Frick , Ryota Iijima , Yuhta Ishii

A recent line of research has established a novel desideratum for designing approximately-revenue-optimal multi-item mechanisms, namely the buy-many constraint. Under this constraint, prices for different allocations made by the mechanism…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-05-17 Shuchi Chawla , Rojin Rezvan , Yifeng Teng , Christos Tzamos

We study the menu complexity of optimal and approximately-optimal auctions in the context of the "FedEx" problem, a so-called "one-and-a-half-dimensional" setting where a single bidder has both a value and a deadline for receiving an…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-11-08 Raghuvansh R. Saxena , Ariel Schvartzman , S. Matthew Weinberg

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

We provide a characterization of revenue-optimal dynamic mechanisms in settings where a monopolist sells k items over k periods to a buyer who realizes his value for item i in the beginning of period i. We require that the mechanism…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-07-06 Itai Ashlagi , Constantinos Daskalakis , Nima Haghpanah

We consider a revenue-maximizing seller with $n$ items facing a single buyer. We introduce the notion of symmetric menu complexity of a mechanism, which counts the number of distinct options the buyer may purchase, up to permutations of the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-05-08 Pravesh Kothari , Divyarthi Mohan , Ariel Schvartzman , Sahil Singla , S. Matthew Weinberg

We consider a revenue-maximizing seller with $m$ heterogeneous items and a single buyer whose valuation $v$ for the items may exhibit both substitutes (i.e., for some $S, T$, $v(S \cup T) < v(S) + v(T)$) and complements (i.e., for some $S,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-04-11 Alon Eden , Michal Feldman , Ophir Friedler , Inbal Talgam-Cohen , S. Matthew Weinberg

We investigate the power of randomness in the context of a fundamental Bayesian optimal mechanism design problem--a single seller aims to maximize expected revenue by allocating multiple kinds of resources to "unit-demand" agents with…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2010-02-24 Shuchi Chawla , David Malec , Balasubramanian Sivan

The problem of designing a profit-maximizing, Bayesian incentive compatible and individually rational mechanism with flexible consumers and costly heterogeneous supply is considered. In our setup, each consumer is associated with a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-02-01 Shiva Navabi , Ashutosh Nayyar

We study a classic Bayesian mechanism design setting of monopoly problem for an additive buyer in the presence of budgets. In this setting a monopolist seller with $m$ heterogeneous items faces a single buyer and seeks to maximize her…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-10-09 Yu Cheng , Nick Gravin , Kamesh Munagala , Kangning Wang

In many shopping scenarios, e.g., in online shopping, customers have a large menu of options to choose from. However, most of the buyers do not browse all the options and make decision after considering only a small part of the menu. To…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-02-15 Nick Gravin , Zhihao Gavin Tang

Lately, the problem of designing multi-stage dynamic mechanisms has been shown to be both theoretically challenging and practically important. In this paper, we consider the problem of designing revenue optimal dynamic mechanism for a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-07-07 Vahab Mirrokni , Renato Paes Leme , Pingzhong Tang , Song Zuo