Related papers: Is Collusion-Proof Procurement Expensive?
We study the inefficiency of mixed equilibria, expressed as the price of anarchy, of all-pay auctions in three different environments: combinatorial, multi-unit and single-item auctions. First, we consider item-bidding combinatorial…
The design of revenue-maximizing combinatorial auctions, i.e. multi-item auctions over bundles of goods, is one of the most fundamental problems in computational economics, unsolved even for two bidders and two items for sale. In the…
We embed observational learning (BHW) in a symmetric duopoly with random arrivals and search frictions. With fixed posted prices, a mixed-strategy pricing equilibrium exists and yields price dispersion even with ex-ante identical firms. We…
As computational agents are developed for increasingly complicated e-commerce applications, the complexity of the decisions they face demands advances in artificial intelligence techniques. For example, an agent representing a seller in an…
We investigate a novel approach to resilient distributed optimization with quadratic costs in a multi-agent system prone to unexpected events that make some agents misbehave. In contrast to commonly adopted filtering strategies, we draw…
The research presented in this work is motivated by some recent papers regarding hedging and valuation of financial securities subject to funding costs, collateralization and counterparty credit risk. Our goal is to provide a sound…
In today's economy, selling a new zero-marginal cost product is a real challenge, as it is difficult to determine a product's "correct" sales price based on its profit and dissemination. As an example, think of the price of a new app or…
When bidders bid on complex objects, they might be unaware of characteristics effecting their valuations. We assume that each buyer's valuation is a sum of independent random variables, one for each characteristic. When a bidder is unaware…
This thesis investigates the dynamics of multimarket contact and airline mergers on collusive pricing of airlines. In align with Bernheim and Whinston (1990) and Athey et.al.(2004), it detects collusive pricing via pairwise price difference…
Most modern ticketing systems rely on a first-come-first-serve or randomized allocation system to determine the allocation of tickets. Such systems has received considerable backlash in recent years due to its inequitable allotment and…
We conduct experiments with algorithmic pricing agents based on Large Language Models (LLMs). In oligopoly settings, LLM-based pricing agents quickly and autonomously reach supracompetitive prices and profits. Variation in seemingly…
We consider mechanisms for truthfully eliciting probabilistic predictions from a group of experts. The standard approach -- using a proper scoring rule to separately reward each expert -- is not robust to collusion: experts may collude to…
The price system is often said to economize on information, but economics has lacked a formal measure of how much information it saves. This paper develops such a measure. We construct a proof-theoretic framework for decentralized…
Crowdsourcing offers unprecedented potential for solving tasks efficiently by tapping into the skills of large groups of people. A salient feature of crowdsourcing---its openness of entry---makes it vulnerable to malicious behavior. Such…
Incorporating fairness criteria in optimization problems comes at a certain cost, which is measured by the so-called price of fairness. Here we consider the allocation of indivisible goods. For envy-freeness as fairness criterion it is…
In online advertising, a set of potential advertisements can be ranked by a certain auction system where usually the top-1 advertisement would be selected and displayed at an advertising space. In this paper, we show a selection bias issue…
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…
Corruption has a significant impact on economic growth, democracy, and inequality. It has severe consequences at the human level are incalculable. Public procurement, where public resources are used to purchase goods or services from the…
In an auction each party bids a certain amount and the one which bids the highest is the winner. Interestingly, auctions can also be used as models for other real-world systems. In an all pay auction all parties must pay a forfeit for…
In an incomplete market setting, we consider two financial agents, who wish to price and trade a non-replicable contingent claim. Assuming that the agents are utility maximizers, we propose a transaction price which is a result of the…