Related papers: On the Computational Complexity of Optimal Simple …
We study procurement games where each seller supplies multiple units of his item, with a cost per unit known only to him. The buyer can purchase any number of units from each seller, values different combinations of the items differently,…
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…
Constrained maximization of submodular functions poses a central problem in combinatorial optimization. In many realistic scenarios, a number of agents need to maximize multiple submodular objectives over the same ground set. We study such…
We explore the approximation power of deterministic obviously strategy-proof mechanisms in auctions, where the objective is welfare maximization. A trivial ascending auction on the grand bundle guarantees an approximation of $\min\{m,n\}$…
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…
The Bin Packing Problem involves efficiently packing items into a limited number of bins without exceeding their capacity. In this paper, we try to answer a specific question in this field. Mathematically the combinatorial optimization…
In the problem of allocating a single non-disposable commodity among agents whose preferences are single-peaked, we study a weakening of strategy-proofness called not obvious manipulability (NOM). If agents are cognitively limited, then NOM…
There is only one technique for prior-free optimal mechanism design that generalizes beyond the structurally benevolent setting of digital goods. This technique uses random sampling to estimate the distribution of agent values and then…
A seller is selling a pair of divisible complementary goods to an agent. The agent consumes the goods only in a specific ratio and freely disposes of excess in either goods. The value of the bundle and the ratio are private information of…
In problems involving the allocation of a single non-disposable commodity, we study rules defined on a general domain of preferences requiring only that each preference exhibit a unique global maximum. Our focus is on rules that satisfy a…
Mathematical optimization, although often leading to NP-hard models, is now capable of solving even large-scale instances within reasonable time. However, the primary focus is often placed solely on optimality. This implies that while…
We study the envy free pricing problem faced by a seller who wishes to maximize revenue by setting prices for bundles of items. If there is an unlimited supply of items and agents are single minded then we show that finding the revenue…
We initiate the study of computing (near-)optimal contracts in succinctly representable principal-agent settings. Here optimality means maximizing the principal's expected payoff over all incentive-compatible contracts---known in economics…
We study revenue-optimal pricing in data markets with rational, budget-constrained buyers. Such a market offers multiple datasets for sale, and buyers aim to improve the accuracy of their prediction tasks by acquiring data bundles. The…
Consider a seller with m heterogeneous items for sale to a single additive buyer whose values for the items are arbitrarily correlated. It was previously shown that, in such settings, distributions exist for which the seller's optimal…
We quantify the value of the monopoly's bargaining power in terms of competition complexity--that is, the number of additional bidders the monopoly must attract in simple auctions to match the expected revenue of the optimal mechanisms…
We study large markets with a single seller which can produce many types of goods, and many multi-minded buyers. The seller chooses posted prices for its many items, and the buyers purchase bundles to maximize their utility. For this…
We study fair mechanisms for the classic job scheduling problem on unrelated machines with the objective of minimizing the makespan. This problem is equivalent to minimizing the egalitarian social cost in the fair division of chores. The…
Using AI approaches to automatically design mechanisms has been a central research mission at the interface of AI and economics [Conitzer and Sandholm, 2002]. Previous approaches that attempt to design revenue optimal auctions for the…
We analyze a nonlinear pricing model where the seller controls both product pricing (screening) and buyer information about their own values (persuasion). We prove that the optimal mechanism always consists of finitely many signals and…