Related papers: Applications of $\alpha$-strongly regular distribu…
This paper presents the first polynomial-time algorithm for position and matroid auction environments that learns, from samples from an unknown bounded valuation distribution, an auction with expected revenue arbitrarily close to the…
This work addresses the problem of estimating the parameters of the general half-normal distribution. Namely, the problem of determining the minimum risk equi\-va\-riant (MRE) estimators of the parameters is explored. Simulation studies are…
Myerson's regularity condition of a distribution is a standard assumption in economics. In this paper, we study the complexity of describing a regular distribution within a small statistical distance. Our main result is that…
We introduce several new estimation methods that leverage shape constraints in auction models to estimate various objects of interest, including the distribution of a bidder's valuations, the bidder's ex ante expected surplus, and the…
Classical multi-armed bandit problems use the expected value of an arm as a metric to evaluate its goodness. However, the expected value is a risk-neutral metric. In many applications like finance, one is interested in balancing the…
We consider a monopoly seller who optimally auctions a single object to a single potential buyer, with a known distribution of valuations. We show that a tight lower bound on the seller's expected revenue is $1/e$ times the geometric…
The celebrated Myerson--Satterthwaite theorem shows that in bilateral trade, no mechanism can be simultaneously fully efficient, Bayesian incentive compatible (BIC), and budget balanced (BB). This naturally raises the question of how…
We study information design in click-through auctions, in which the bidders/advertisers bid for winning an opportunity to show their ads but only pay for realized clicks. The payment may or may not happen, and its probability is called the…
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…
We provide a reduction from revenue maximization to welfare maximization in multi-dimensional Bayesian auctions with arbitrary (possibly combinatorial) feasibility constraints and independent bidders with arbitrary (possibly combinatorial)…
We propose a new all-pay auction format in which risk-loving bidders pay a constant fee each time they bid for an object whose monetary value is common knowledge among the bidders, and bidding fees are the only source of benefit for the…
We consider a fundamental problem in microeconomics: selling a single item to a number of potential buyers, whose values are drawn from known independent and regular (not necessarily identical) distributions. There are four widely-used and…
Online auctions are one of the most fundamental facets of the modern economy and power an industry generating hundreds of billions of dollars a year in revenue. Auction theory has historically focused on the question of designing the best…
Sequential auctions for identical items with unit-demand, private-value buyers are common and often occur periodically without end, as new bidders replace departing ones. We model bidder uncertainty by introducing a probability that a…
We study prior-independent pricing for selling a single item to a single buyer when the seller observes only a single sample from the valuation distribution, while the buyer knows the distribution. Classical robust pricing approaches either…
We consider the problem of a single seller repeatedly selling a single item to a single buyer (specifically, the buyer has a value drawn fresh from known distribution $D$ in every round). Prior work assumes that the buyer is fully rational…
Value at Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) have become the most popular measures of market risk in Financial and Insurance fields. However, the estimation of both risk measures is challenging, because it requires the knowledge…
This paper shows how to identify and estimate the seller's risk parameter in an ascending auction. We consider a semiparametric model where the seller has a parametric utility function (such as CARA or CRRA) and the distribution of bidder…
Generalization error bounds are essential for comprehending how well machine learning models work. In this work, we suggest a novel method, i.e., the Auxiliary Distribution Method, that leads to new upper bounds on expected generalization…
Classical optimal auction theory assumes that bids reach the seller directly. We study how this picture changes when a revenue-maximizing intermediary controls access to the seller's auction. Motivated by blockchain auctions, online…