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Related papers: Pricing Online Decisions: Beyond Auctions

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In societal-scale infrastructures, such as electric grids or transportation networks, pricing mechanisms are often used as a way to shape users' demand in order to lower operating costs and improve reliability. Existing approaches to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-08-01 Spencer Hutchinson , Berkay Turan , Mahnoosh Alizadeh

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 study online combinatorial auctions with production costs proposed by Blum et al. using the online primal dual framework. In this model, buyers arrive online, and the seller can produce multiple copies of each item subject to a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-11-18 Zhiyi Huang , Anthony Kim

Algorithms increasingly automate bidding in online auctions, raising concerns about tacit bid suppression and revenue shortfalls. Prior work identifies individual mechanisms behind algorithmic bid suppression, but it remains unclear which…

General Economics · Economics 2026-03-24 Pranjal Rawat

In the quest for market mechanisms that are easy to implement, yet close to optimal, few seem as viable as posted pricing. Despite the growing body of impressive results, the performance of most posted price mechanisms however, rely…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-09-23 Shreyas Sekar

Aiming to overcome some of the limitations of worst-case analysis, the recently proposed framework of "algorithms with predictions" allows algorithms to be augmented with a (possibly erroneous) machine-learned prediction that they can use…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-03-28 Eric Balkanski , Vasilis Gkatzelis , Xizhi Tan , Cherlin Zhu

This paper studies an online selection problem, where a seller seeks to sequentially sell multiple copies of an item to arriving buyers. We consider an adversarial setting, making no modeling assumptions about buyers' valuations for the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-11 Bo Sun , Hossein Nekouyan Jazi , Xiaoqi Tan , Raouf Boutaba

Augmenting the input of algorithms with predictions is an algorithm design paradigm that suggests leveraging a (possibly erroneous) prediction to improve worst-case performance guarantees when the prediction is perfect (consistency), while…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-11-20 Georgios Amanatidis , Evangelos Markakis , Christodoulos Santorinaios , Guido Schäfer , Panagiotis Tsamopoulos , Artem Tsikiridis

The effectiveness of advertising in e-commerce largely depends on the ability of merchants to bid on and win impressions for their targeted users. The bidding procedure is highly complex due to various factors such as market competition,…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2023-12-29 Artem Betlei , Mariia Vladimirova , Mehdi Sebbar , Nicolas Urien , Thibaud Rahier , Benjamin Heymann

A central goal in algorithmic game theory is to analyze the performance of decentralized multiagent systems, like communication and information networks. In the absence of a central planner who can enforce how these systems are utilized,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-05-10 Vasilis Gkatzelis , Kostas Kollias , Alkmini Sgouritsa , Xizhi Tan

We study online resource allocation in a cloud computing platform, through a posted pricing mechanism: The cloud provider publishes a unit price for each resource type, which may vary over time; upon arrival at the cloud system, a cloud…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2017-04-20 Zijun Zhang , Zongpeng Li , Chuan Wu

We study anonymous posted price mechanisms for combinatorial auctions in a Bayesian framework. In a posted price mechanism, item prices are posted, then the consumers approach the seller sequentially in an arbitrary order, each purchasing…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-11-19 Michal Feldman , Nick Gravin , Brendan Lucier

In mechanism design, it is challenging to design the optimal auction with correlated values in general settings. Although value distribution can be further exploited to improve revenue, the complex correlation structure makes it hard to…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-02-21 Da Huo , Zhilin Zhang , Zhenzhe Zheng , Chuan Yu , Jian Xu , Fan Wu

We study revenue optimization pricing algorithms for repeated posted-price auctions where a seller interacts with a single strategic buyer that holds a fixed private valuation. We show that, in the case when both the seller and the buyer…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-05-08 Arsenii Vanunts , Alexey Drutsa

In this study, we apply reinforcement learning techniques and propose what we call reinforcement mechanism design to tackle the dynamic pricing problem in sponsored search auctions. In contrast to previous game-theoretical approaches that…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-11-29 Weiran Shen , Binghui Peng , Hanpeng Liu , Michael Zhang , Ruohan Qian , Yan Hong , Zhi Guo , Zongyao Ding , Pengjun Lu , Pingzhong Tang

When online sellers use AI learning algorithms to automatically compete on e-commerce platforms, there is concern that they will learn to coordinate on higher than competitive prices. However, this concern was primarily raised in…

General Economics · Economics 2025-11-03 Hangcheng Zhao , Ron Berman

A seller wants to sell a good to a set of bidders using a credible mechanism. We show that when the seller has private information about her cost, it is impossible for a static mechanism to achieve the optimal revenue. In particular, even…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-09-29 Martino Banchio , Andrzej Skrzypacz , Frank Yang

Selling a single item to $n$ self-interested buyers is a fundamental problem in economics, where the two objectives typically considered are welfare maximization and revenue maximization. Since the optimal mechanisms are often impractical…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-11-06 Billy Jin , Thomas Kesselheim , Will Ma , Sahil Singla

Good economic mechanisms depend on the preferences of participants in the mechanism. For example, the revenue-optimal auction for selling an item is parameterized by a reserve price, and the appropriate reserve price depends on how much the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-06-10 Shuchi Chawla , Jason Hartline , Denis Nekipelov

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-02-21 Michal Feldman , Vasilis Gkatzelis , Nick Gravin , Daniel Schoepflin