Related papers: Combinatorial Auctions Do Need Modest Interaction
We study the maximum $k$-set coverage problem in the following distributed setting. A collection of sets $S_1,\ldots,S_m$ over a universe $[n]$ is partitioned across $p$ machines and the goal is to find $k$ sets whose union covers the most…
Combinatorial auctions where agents can bid on bundles of items are desirable because they allow the agents to express complementarity and substitutability between the items. However, expressing one's preferences can require bidding on all…
We improve the best known competitive ratio (from 1/4 to 1/2), for the online multi-unit allocation problem, where the objective is to maximize the single-price revenue. Moreover, the competitive ratio of our algorithm tends to 1, as the…
In this note we study the greedy algorithm for combinatorial auctions with submodular bidders. It is well known that this algorithm provides an approximation ratio of $2$ for every order of the items. We show that if the valuations are…
The focus of classic mechanism design has been on truthful direct-revelation mechanisms. In the context of combinatorial auctions the truthful direct-revelation mechanism that maximizes social welfare is the VCG mechanism. For many…
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…
Round complexity is an extensively studied metric of distributed algorithms. In contrast, our knowledge of the \emph{message complexity} of distributed computing problems and its relationship (if any) with round complexity is still quite…
Revenue-optimal auction design is a challenging problem with significant theoretical and practical implications. Sequential auction mechanisms, known for their simplicity and strong strategyproofness guarantees, are often limited by…
We study allocation problems without monetary transfers where agents have correlated types, i.e., hold private information about one another. Such peer information is relevant in various settings, including science funding, allocation of…
The majority of online marketplaces offer promotion programs to sellers to acquire additional customers for their products. These programs typically allow sellers to allocate advertising budgets to promote their products, with higher…
We study the communication complexity of combinatorial auctions via interpolation mechanisms that interpolate between non-truthful and truthful protocols. Specifically, an interpolation mechanism has two phases. In the first phase, the…
In this paper we explore fundamental problems in randomized communication complexity such as computing Set Intersection on sets of size $k$ and Equality Testing between vectors of length $k$. Sa\u{g}lam and Tardos and Brody et al. showed…
Optimal mechanism design enjoys a beautiful and well-developed theory, and also a number of killer applications. Rules of thumb produced by the field influence everything from how governments sell wireless spectrum licenses to how the major…
We study the complexity of a fundamental algorithm for fairly allocating indivisible items, the round-robin algorithm. For $n$ agents and $m$ items, we show that the algorithm can be implemented in time $O(nm\log(m/n))$ in the worst case.…
Sponsored search auctions are commonly modeled as an assignment of a fixed set of slots (positions) to a set of advertisers, with welfare maximization being reducible to a standard matching problem. Motivated by modern ad formats, we study…
Prophet inequalities compare the expected performance of an online algorithm for a stochastic optimization problem to the expected optimal solution in hindsight. They are a major alternative to classic worst-case competitive analysis, of…
It is widely believed that computing payments needed to induce truthful bidding is somehow harder than simply computing the allocation. We show that the opposite is true: creating a randomized truthful mechanism is essentially as easy as a…
By prior work, it is known that any distributed graph algorithm that finds a maximal matching requires $\Omega(\log^* n)$ communication rounds, while it is possible to find a maximal fractional matching in $O(1)$ rounds in bounded-degree…
We consider the allocation of indivisible objects among agents with different valuations, which can be positive or negative. An egalitarian allocation is an allocation that maximizes the smallest value given to an agent; finding such an…
Many auction settings implicitly or explicitly require that bidders are treated equally ex-ante. This may be because discrimination is philosophically or legally impermissible, or because it is practically difficult to implement or…