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We consider the well known, and notoriously difficult, problem of a single revenue-maximizing seller selling two or more heterogeneous goods to a single buyer whose private values for the goods are drawn from a (possibly correlated) known…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-09-23 Sergiu Hart , Noam Nisan

We consider a model of bilateral trade with private values. The value of the buyer and the cost of the seller are jointly distributed. The true joint distribution is unknown to the designer, however, the marginal distributions of the value…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-01-02 Komal Malik

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-07-20 Hu Fu , Chris Liaw , Pinyan Lu , Zhihao Gavin Tang

We study a seller who sells a single good to multiple bidders with uncertainty over the joint distribution of bidders' valuations, as well as bidders' higher-order beliefs about their opponents. The seller only knows the (possibly…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-02-16 Ethan Che

In this paper, we show a tight approximation guarantee for budget-feasible mechanisms with an additive buyer. We propose a new simple randomized mechanism with approximation ratio of $2$, improving the previous best known result of $3$. Our…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-07-22 Nick Gravin , Yaonan Jin , Pinyan Lu , Chenhao Zhang

A fundamental economic question is that of designing revenue-maximizing mechanisms in dynamic environments. This paper considers a simple yet compelling market model to tackle this question, where forward-looking buyers arrive at the market…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-10-16 Jose Correa , Andres Cristi , Laura Vargas Koch

A seller wants to sell an item to $n$ buyers. Buyer valuations are drawn i.i.d. from a distribution unknown to the seller; the seller only knows that the support is included in $[a, b]$. To be robust, the seller chooses a DSIC mechanism…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-01-03 Jerry Anunrojwong , Santiago R. Balseiro , Omar Besbes

We provide a Polynomial Time Approximation Scheme (PTAS) for the Bayesian optimal multi-item multi-bidder auction problem under two conditions. First, bidders are independent, have additive valuations and are from the same population.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-11-06 Yang Cai , Zhiyi Huang

We consider online procurement auctions, where the agents arrive sequentially, in random order, and have private costs for their services. The buyer aims to maximize a monotone submodular value function for the subset of agents whose…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-04-15 Andreas Charalampopoulos , Dimitris Fotakis , Panagiotis Patsilinakos , Thanos Tolias

Generating good revenue is one of the most important problems in Bayesian auction design, and many (approximately) optimal dominant-strategy incentive compatible (DSIC) Bayesian mechanisms have been constructed for various auction settings.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-08-07 Jing Chen , Bo Li , Yingkai Li , Pinyan Lu

We consider the problem of maximizing revenue for a monopolist offering multiple items to multiple heterogeneous buyers. We develop a simple mechanism that obtains a constant factor approximation under the assumption that the buyers' values…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-08-10 Shuchi Chawla , J. Benjamin Miller

Finding the optimal (revenue-maximizing) mechanism to sell multiple items has been a prominent and notoriously difficult open problem. Existing work has mainly focused on deriving analytical results tailored to a particular class of…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-01-09 Kento Hashimoto , Keita Kuwahara , Reo Nonaka

We study a repeated trading problem in which a mechanism designer facilitates trade between a single seller and multiple buyers. Our model generalizes the classic bilateral trade setting to a multi-buyer environment. Specifically, the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Anna Lunghi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi

In mechanism design it is typical to impose incentive compatibility and then derive an optimal mechanism subject to this constraint. By replacing the incentive compatibility requirement with the goal of minimizing expected ex post regret,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-08-07 Paul Duetting , Felix Fischer , Pitchayut Jirapinyo , John K. Lai , Benjamin Lubin , David C. Parkes

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

Interdependent values make basic auction design tasks -- in particular maximizing welfare truthfully in single-item auctions -- quite challenging. Eden et al. recently established that if the bidders valuation functions are submodular over…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-07-20 Ameer Amer , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

We study risk-free bidding strategies in combinatorial auctions with incomplete information. Specifically, what is the maximum profit that a complement-free (subadditive) bidder can guarantee in a multi-item combinatorial auction? Suppose…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-11-30 Vishnu V. Narayan , Gautam Rayaprolu , Adrian Vetta

We design algorithms for computing approximately revenue-maximizing {\em sequential posted-pricing mechanisms (SPM)} in $K$-unit auctions, in a standard Bayesian model. A seller has $K$ copies of an item to sell, and there are $n$ buyers,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2010-08-11 Tanmoy Chakraborty , Eyal Even-Dar , Sudipto Guha , Yishay Mansour , S. Muthukrishnan

We consider optimal mechanism design for the case with one buyer and two items. The buyer's valuations towards the two items are independent and additive. In this setting, optimal mechanism is unknown for general valuation distributions. We…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-04-30 Zihe Wang , Pingzhong Tang

Bilateral trade is a fundamental economic scenario comprising a strategically acting buyer and seller, each holding valuations for the item, drawn from publicly known distributions. A mechanism is supposed to facilitate trade between these…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-10-24 Riccardo Colini-Baldeschi , Paul Goldberg , Bart de Keijzer , Stefano Leonardi , Stefano Turchetta