Related papers: Optimal mechanisms with budget for user generated …
In this paper we consider a generalization of the well-known budgeted maximum coverage problem. We are given a ground set of elements and a set of bins. The goal is to find a subset of elements along with an associated set of bins, such…
Online social networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube) provide a popular, cost-effective and scalable framework for sharing user-generated contents. This paper addresses the intrinsic incentive problems residing in social networks using a…
We study how to optimally segment monopolistic markets with a redistributive objective. We characterize optimal redistributive segmentations and show that they (i) induce the seller to price progressively, i.e., charge richer consumers…
Many websites rely on user-generated content to provide value to consumers. These websites typically incentivize participation by awarding users badges based on their contributions. While these badges typically have no explicit value, they…
Submodular optimization finds applications in machine learning and data mining. In this paper, we study the problem of maximizing functions of the form $h = f-c$, where $f$ is a monotone, non-negative, weakly submodular set function and $c$…
We consider a distribution logistics scenario where a shipping operator, managing a limited amount of resources, receives a stream of collection requests, issued by a set of customers along a booking time-horizon, that are referred to a…
An auction house cannot generally provide the optimal auction technology to every client. Instead it provides one or several auction technologies, and clients select the most appropriate one. For example, eBay provides ascending auctions…
We study an online version of the max-min fair allocation problem for indivisible items. In this problem, items arrive one by one, and each item must be allocated irrevocably on arrival to one of $n$ agents, who have additive valuations for…
The submodular maximization problem is widely applicable in many engineering problems where objectives exhibit diminishing returns. While this problem is known to be NP-hard for certain subclasses of objective functions, there is a greedy…
It is generally believed that submodular functions -- and the more general class of $\gamma$-weakly submodular functions -- may only be optimized under the non-negativity assumption $f(S) \geq 0$. In this paper, we show that once the…
With the tremendous increase of the Internet traffic, achieving the best performance with limited resources is becoming an extremely urgent problem. In order to address this concern, in this paper, we build an optimization problem which…
We consider a mechanism design problem for energy procurement, when there is one buyer and one seller, and the buyer is the mechanism designer. The seller can generate energy from conventional (deterministic) and renewable (random) plants,…
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…
Utilitarian algorithm configuration identifies a parameter setting for a given algorithm that maximizes a user's utility. Utility functions offer a theoretically well-grounded approach to optimizing decision-making under uncertainty and are…
Symmetric submodular maximization is an important class of combinatorial optimization problems, including MAX-CUT on graphs and hyper-graphs. The state-of-the-art algorithm for the problem over general constraints has an approximation ratio…
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…
A mobile cloud computing system is composed of heterogeneous services and resources to be allocated by the cloud service provider to mobile cloud users. On one hand, some of these resources are substitutable (e.g., users can use storage…
This paper deals with the problem of computing, in an online fashion, a maximum benefit multi-commodity flow (\ONMCF), where the flow demands may be bigger than the edge capacities of the network. We present an online, deterministic,…
It has been recently shown that numerical semiparametric bounds on the expected payoff of fi- nancial or actuarial instruments can be computed using semidefinite programming. However, this approach has practical limitations. Here we use…
Budget feasible mechanism considers algorithmic mechanism design questions where there is a budget constraint on the total payment of the mechanism. An important question in the field is that under which valuation domains there exist budget…