Related papers: Perfect bidder collusion through bribe and request
We introduce a new numerical framework to learn optimal bidding strategies in repeated auctions when the seller uses past bids to optimize her mechanism. Crucially, we do not assume that the bidders know what optimization mechanism is used…
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 introduce draft auctions, which is a sequential auction format where at each iteration players bid for the right to buy items at a fixed price. We show that draft auctions offer an exponential improvement in social welfare at equilibrium…
We consider the computational complexity of a problem modeling bribery in the context of voting systems. In the scenario of Swap Bribery, each voter assigns a certain price for swapping the positions of two consecutive candidates in his…
We study the problem of a buyer (aka auctioneer) who gains stochastic rewards by procuring multiple units of a service or item from a pool of heterogeneous strategic agents. The reward obtained for a single unit from an allocated agent…
We consider a dynamic mechanism design problem where an auctioneer sells an indivisible good to groups of buyers in every round, for a total of $T$ rounds. The auctioneer aims to maximize their discounted overall revenue while adhering to a…
The long-term success of cryptocurrencies largely depends on the incentive compatibility provided to the validators. Bribery attacks, facilitated trustlessly via smart contracts, threaten this foundation. This work introduces, implements,…
Classical optimal auction theory assumes that bids reach the seller directly. We study how this picture changes when a revenue-maximizing intermediary controls access to the seller's auction. Motivated by blockchain auctions, online…
We study social welfare of learning outcomes in mechanisms with admission. In our repeated game there are $n$ bidders and $m$ mechanisms, and in each round each mechanism is available for each bidder only with a certain probability. Our…
We consider auctions with N+1 bidders. Of these, N are symmetric and N+1 is "sufficiently strong" relative to the others. The auction is a "tournament" in which the first N players bid to win the right to compete with N+1. The bids of the…
This paper describes a study of agent bidding strategies, assuming combinatorial valuations for complementary and substitutable goods, in three auction environments: sequential auctions, simultaneous auctions, and the Trading Agent…
A seller wants to sell a good to a set of bidders using a credible mechanism. We show that when the seller has private information about her cost, it is impossible for a static mechanism to achieve the optimal revenue. In particular, even…
Designing revenue optimal auctions for selling an item to $n$ symmetric bidders is a fundamental problem in mechanism design. Myerson (1981) shows that the second price auction with an appropriate reserve price is optimal when bidders'…
We derive optimal strategies for a bidding agent that participates in multiple, simultaneous second-price auctions with perfect substitutes. We prove that, if everyone else bids locally in a single auction, the global bidder should always…
I study the design of auctions in which the auctioneer is assumed to have information only about the marginal distribution of a generic bidder's valuation, but does not know the correlation structure of the joint distribution of bidders'…
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…
We study problems arising in real-time auction markets, common in e-commerce and computational advertising, where bidders face the problem of calculating optimal bids. We focus upon a contract management problem where a demand aggregator is…
The all-pay auction, a classic competitive model, is widely applied in scenarios such as political elections, sports competitions, and research and development, where all participants pay their bids regardless of winning or losing. However,…
In an auction each party bids a certain amount and the one which bids the highest is the winner. Interestingly, auctions can also be used as models for other real-world systems. In an all pay auction all parties must pay a forfeit for…
We provide efficient estimation methods for first- and second-price auctions under independent (asymmetric) private values and partial observability. Given a finite set of observations, each comprising the identity of the winner and the…