Related papers: The Sample Complexity of Revenue Maximization
Modern ad auctions allow advertisers to target more specific segments of the user population. Unfortunately, this is not always in the best interest of the ad platform. In this paper, we examine the following basic question in the context…
When selling many goods with independent valuations, we develop a distributionally robust framework, consisting of a two-player game between seller and nature. The seller has only limited knowledge about the value distribution. The seller…
We consider an outsourcing problem where a software agent procures multiple services from providers with uncertain reliabilities to complete a computational task before a strict deadline. The service consumer requires a procurement strategy…
I study the design of auctions in which the auctioneer is assumed to have information only about the marginal distribution of a generic bidder's valuation, but does not know the correlation structure of the joint distribution of bidders'…
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…
Very few exact solutions are known for the monopolist's $k$-item $n$-buyer maximum revenue problem with additive valuation in which $k, n >1$ and the buyers $i$ have independent private distributions $F^j_i$ on items $j$. In this paper we…
Two sellers compete to sell identical products to a single buyer. Each seller chooses an arbitrary mechanism, possibly involving lotteries, to sell their product. The utility-maximizing buyer can choose to participate in one or both…
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…
We consider a revenue optimizing seller selling a single item to a buyer, on whose private value the seller has a noisy signal. We show that, when the signal is kept private, arbitrarily more revenue could potentially be extracted than if…
Equilibria in auctions can be very difficult to analyze, beyond the symmetric environments where revenue equivalence renders the analysis straightforward. This paper takes a robust approach to evaluating the equilibria of auctions. Rather…
In the multi-unit pricing problem, multiple units of a single item are for sale. A buyer's valuation for $n$ units of the item is $v \min \{ n, d\} $, where the per unit valuation $v$ and the capacity $d$ are private information of the…
In the Bidder Selection Problem (BSP) there is a large pool of $n$ potential advertisers competing for ad slots on the user's web page. Due to strict computational restrictions, the advertising platform can run a proper auction only for a…
Selling a perfectly divisible item to potential buyers is a fundamental task with apparent applications to pricing communication bandwidth and cloud computing services. Surprisingly, despite the rich literature on single-item auctions,…
We study the social efficiency of bilateral trade between a seller and a buyer. In the classical Bayesian setting, the celebrated Myerson-Satterthwaite impossibility theorem states that no Bayesian incentive-compatible, individually…
We study the Price of Anarchy of simultaneous first-price auctions for buyers with submodular and subadditive valuations. The current best upper bounds for the Bayesian Price of Anarchy of these auctions are e/(e-1) [Syrgkanis and Tardos…
We provide an elementary proof that revenue-maximizing mechanisms exist in multi-parameter settings whenever the distribution of valuations has finite expectation.
The design of data markets has gained importance as firms increasingly use machine learning models fueled by externally acquired training data. A key consideration is the externalities firms face when data, though inherently freely…
A monopolistic seller aims to sell an indivisible item to multiple potential buyers. Each buyer's valuation depends on their private type and the item's quality. The seller can observe the quality but it is unknown to buyers. This quality…
What fraction of the potential social surplus in an environment can be extracted by a revenue-maximizing monopolist? We investigate this problem in Bayesian single-parameter environments with independent private values. The precise answer…
To select a subset of samples or "winners" from a population of candidates, order sampling [Rosen 1997] and the k-unit Myerson auction [Myerson 1981] share a common scheme: assign a (random) score to each candidate, then select the k…