Related papers: An End-to-end Argument in Mechanism Design (Prior-…
We study the design of mechanisms -- e.g., auctions -- when the designer does not control information flows between mechanism participants. A mechanism equilibrium is leakage-proof if no player conditions their actions on leaked…
This paper reexamines the classic problem of revenue maximization in single-item auctions with $n$ buyers under the lens of the robust optimization framework. The celebrated Myerson's mechanism is the format that maximizes the seller's…
This paper studies mechanism design for auctions with externalities on budgets, a novel setting where the budgets that bidders commit are adjusted due to the externality of the competitors' allocation outcomes-a departure from traditional…
We consider budget feasible mechanisms for procurement auctions with additive valuation functions. For the divisible case, where agents can be allocated fractionally, there exists an optimal mechanism with approximation guarantee $e/(e-1)$…
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…
This paper considers Bayesian revenue maximization in the $k$-unit setting, where a monopolist seller has $k$ copies of an indivisible item and faces $n$ unit-demand buyers (whose value distributions can be non-identical). Four basic…
We investigate the power of randomness in the context of a fundamental Bayesian optimal mechanism design problem--a single seller aims to maximize expected revenue by allocating multiple kinds of resources to "unit-demand" agents with…
We study the problem of designing optimal auctions under restrictions on the set of permissible allocations. In addition to allowing us to restrict to deterministic mechanisms, we can also indirectly model non-additive valuations. We prove…
Peer-prediction is a mechanism which elicits privately-held, non-variable information from self-interested agents---formally, truth-telling is a strict Bayes Nash equilibrium of the mechanism. The original Peer-prediction mechanism suffers…
The paper designs revenue-maximizing auction mechanisms for agents who aim to maximize their total obtained values rather than the classical quasi-linear utilities. Several models have been proposed to capture the behaviors of such agents…
Auction design for the modern advertising market has gained significant prominence in the field of game theory. With the recent rise of auto-bidding tools, an increasing number of advertisers in the market are utilizing these tools for…
In the private values single object auction model, we construct a satisfactory mechanism - a symmetric, dominant strategy incentive compatible, and budget-balanced mechanism. Our mechanism allocates the object to the highest valued agent…
The transition to auto-bidding in online advertising has shifted the focus of auction theory from quasi-linear utility maximization to value maximization subject to financial constraints. We study mechanism design for buyers with private…
This paper compares two leading approaches for robust optimization in the models of online algorithms and mechanism design. Competitive analysis compares the performance of an online algorithm to an offline benchmark in worst-case over…
We study an abstract optimal auction problem for a single good or service. This problem includes environments where agents have budgets, risk preferences, or multi-dimensional preferences over several possible configurations of the good…
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…
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…
A fundamental result in mechanism design theory, the so-called revelation principle, asserts that for many questions concerning the existence of mechanisms with a given outcome one can restrict attention to truthful direct…
We investigate approximately optimal mechanisms in settings where bidders' utility functions are non-linear; specifically, convex, with respect to payments (such settings arise, for instance, in procurement auctions for energy). We provide…
We develop a tool akin to the revelation principle for dynamic mechanism-selection games in which the designer can only commit to short-term mechanisms. We identify a canonical class of mechanisms rich enough to replicate the outcomes of…