Related papers: Bayesian Auctions with Efficient Queries
We consider an optimal stopping problem with n correlated offers where the goal is to design a (randomized) stopping strategy that maximizes the expected value of the offer in the sequence at which we stop. Instead of assuming to know the…
One of the most celebrated results in mechanism design is Myerson's characterization of the revenue optimal auction for selling a single item. However, this result relies heavily on the assumption that buyers are indifferent to risk. In…
We study the identification and estimation of first-price auction models where bidders have ambiguity about the valuation distribution and their preferences are represented by maxmin expected utility. When entry is exogenous, the…
We construct prior-free auctions with constant-factor approximation guarantees with ordered bidders, in both unlimited and limited supply settings. We compare the expected revenue of our auctions on a bid vector to the monotone price…
We consider the fundamental problem of designing a truthful single-item auction with the challenging objective of extracting a large fraction of the highest agent valuation as revenue. Following a recent trend in algorithm design, we assume…
Equilibrium problems in Bayesian auction games can be described as systems of differential equations. Depending on the model assumptions, these equations might be such that we do not have a rigorous mathematical solution theory. The lack of…
Good economic mechanisms depend on the preferences of participants in the mechanism. For example, the revenue-optimal auction for selling an item is parameterized by a reserve price, and the appropriate reserve price depends on how much the…
Preferential Bayesian optimization allows optimization of objectives that are either expensive or difficult to measure directly, by relying on a minimal number of comparative evaluations done by a human expert. Generating candidate…
We study multi-item profit maximization when there is an underlying distribution over buyers' values. In practice, a full description of the distribution is typically unavailable, so we study the setting where the mechanism designer only…
Along with substantial progress made recently in designing near-optimal mechanisms for multi-item auctions, interesting structural questions have also been raised and studied. In particular, is it true that the seller can always extract…
We consider the problem of designing revenue-optimal auctions for selling two items and bidders' valuations are independent among bidders but negatively correlated among items. In this paper, we obtain the closed-form optimal auction for…
Consider Myerson's optimal auction with respect to an inaccurate prior, e.g., estimated from data, which is an underestimation of the true value distribution. Can the auctioneer expect getting at least the optimal revenue w.r.t. the…
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…
Bayesian optimal experimental design has immense potential to inform the collection of data so as to subsequently enhance our understanding of a variety of processes. However, a major impediment is the difficulty in evaluating optimal…
We consider a monopolist seller facing a single buyer with additive valuations over n heterogeneous, independent items. It is known that in this important setting optimal mechanisms may require randomization [HR12], use menus of infinite…
Budget feasible mechanism design studies procurement combinatorial auctions where the sellers have private costs to produce items, and the buyer(auctioneer) aims to maximize a social valuation function on subsets of items, under the budget…
Diffusion auction is a new model in auction design. It can incentivize the buyers who have already joined in the auction to further diffuse the sale information to others via social relations, whereby both the seller's revenue and the…
A sequence of recent studies show that even in the simple setting of a single seller and a single buyer with additive, independent valuations over $m$ items, the revenue-maximizing mechanism is prohibitively complex. This problem has been…
This paper considers data-driven chance-constrained stochastic optimization problems in a Bayesian framework. Bayesian posteriors afford a principled mechanism to incorporate data and prior knowledge into stochastic optimization problems.…
We study the problem of selling $n$ items to a single buyer with an additive valuation function. We consider the valuation of the items to be correlated, i.e., desirabilities of the buyer for the items are not drawn independently. Ideally,…