Related papers: Optimal mechanisms with simple menus
We consider an optimal stopping problem with n correlated offers where the goal is to design a (randomized) stopping strategy that maximizes the expected value of the offer in the sequence at which we stop. Instead of assuming to know the…
We study the problem of selling information to a data-buyer who faces a decision problem under uncertainty. We consider the classic Bayesian decision-theoretic model pioneered by [Blackwell, 1951, 1953]. Initially, the data buyer has only…
In practice, auction data are often endogenously censored and anonymous, revealing only limited outcome statistics rather than full bid profiles. We study robust auction design when the seller observes only aggregated, anonymous order…
We study a class of nonconvex nonsmooth optimization problems in which the objective is a sum of two functions: One function is the average of a large number of differentiable functions, while the other function is proper, lower…
We show that computing the revenue-optimal deterministic auction in unit-demand single-buyer Bayesian settings, i.e. the optimal item-pricing, is computationally hard even in single-item settings where the buyer's value distribution is a…
We study the problem of mechanism design for allocating a set of indivisible items among agents with private preferences on items. We are interested in such a mechanism that is strategyproof (where agents' best strategy is to report their…
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…
In this paper we consider a generalization of the well-known budgeted maximum coverage problem. We are given a ground set of elements and a set of bins. The goal is to find a subset of elements along with an associated set of bins, such…
Multitask learning and related areas such as multi-source domain adaptation address modern settings where datasets from $N$ related distributions $\{P_t\}$ are to be combined towards improving performance on any single such distribution…
In this paper we revisit the notion of simplicity in mechanisms. We consider a seller of $m$ items, facing a single buyer with valuation $v$. We observe that previous attempts to define complexity measures often fail to classify mechanisms…
Consider a trade market with one seller and multiple buyers. The seller aims to sell an indivisible item and maximize their revenue. This paper focuses on a simple and popular mechanism--the fixed-price mechanism. Unlike the standard…
We study the problem of fairly allocating a set of $m$ goods among $n$ agents in the asymptotic setting, where each item's value for each agent is drawn from an underlying joint distribution. Prior works have shown that if this distribution…
We study hidden-action principal-agent problems in which a principal commits to an outcome-dependent payment scheme (called contract) so as to incentivize the agent to take a costly, unobservable action leading to favorable outcomes. In…
We consider the provision of an abstract service to single-dimensional agents. Our model includes position auctions, single-minded combinatorial auctions, and constrained matching markets. When the agents' values are drawn from a…
It was recently shown in [http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.5518] that revenue optimization can be computationally efficiently reduced to welfare optimization in all multi-dimensional Bayesian auction problems with arbitrary (possibly…
We study a new model of complementary valuations, which we call "proportional complementarities." In contrast to common models, such as hypergraphic valuations, in our model, we do not assume that the extra value derived from owning a set…
We study revenue optimization in a repeated auction between a single seller and a single buyer. Traditionally, the design of repeated auctions requires strong modeling assumptions about the bidder behavior, such as it being myopic, infinite…
In this work, we study spectrum auction problem where each request from secondary users has spatial, temporal, and spectral features. With the requests of secondary users and the reserve price of the primary user, our goal is to design…
Machine learning has developed a variety of tools for learning and representing high-dimensional distributions with structure. Recent years have also seen big advances in designing multi-item mechanisms. Akin to overfitting, however, these…
We study approximation algorithms for revenue maximization based on static item pricing, where a seller chooses prices for various goods in the market, and then the buyers purchase utility-maximizing bundles at these given prices. We…