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We study auction design when a seller relies on machine-learning predictions of bidders' valuations that may be unreliable. Motivated by modern ML systems that are often accurate but occasionally fail in a way that is essentially…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-01-29 Ilan Lobel , Humberto Moreira , Omar Mouchtaki

What fraction of the single item $n$ buyers setting's expected optimal revenue MyeRev can the second price auction with reserves achieve? In the special case where the buyers' valuation distributions are all drawn i.i.d. and the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-06-28 Will Ma , Balasubramanian Sivan

Classic results show that even an arbitrarily small correlation across bidders' information can enable full surplus extraction in auctions and related mechanism design settings. Motivated by this fragility, we study the information…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Boyu Liu , Wei Tang , Zihe Wang , Shuo Zhang

I consider a mechanism design problem of selling multiple goods to multiple bidders when the designer has minimal amount of information. I assume that the designer only knows the upper bounds of bidders' values for each good and has no…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-05-02 Wanchang Zhang

We study revenue optimization pricing algorithms for repeated posted-price auctions where a seller interacts with a single strategic buyer that holds a fixed private valuation. We show that, in the case when both the seller and the buyer…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-05-08 Arsenii Vanunts , Alexey Drutsa

In this paper, we study the non-stationary online second price auction problem. We assume that the seller is selling the same type of items in $T$ rounds by the second price auction, and she can set the reserve price in each round. In each…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-15 Haoyu Zhao , Wei Chen

Consider a seller that intends to auction some item. The seller can invest money and effort in advertising in different market segments in order to recruit $n$ bidders to the auction. Alternatively, the seller can have a much cheaper and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-06-03 Amir Ban , Avi Cohen , Shahar Dobzinski , Itai Ashlagi

The online ads trading platform plays a crucial role in connecting publishers and advertisers and generates tremendous value in facilitating the convenience of our lives. It has been evolving into a more and more complicated structure. In…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-10-02 Zhihui Xie , Kuang-Chih Lee , Liang Wang

We consider the problem of the optimization of bidding strategies in prior-dependent revenue-maximizing auctions, when the seller fixes the reserve prices based on the bid distributions. Our study is done in the setting where one bidder is…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-05-15 Thomas Nedelec , Noureddine El Karoui , Vianney Perchet

We present an extensive analysis of the key problem of learning optimal reserve prices for generalized second price auctions. We describe two algorithms for this task: one based on density estimation, and a novel algorithm benefiting from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-06-10 Mehryar Mohri , Andres Munoz Medina

Modern ad auctions allow advertisers to target more specific segments of the user population. Unfortunately, this is not always in the best interest of the ad platform. In this paper, we examine the following basic question in the context…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-07-16 Ashwinkumar Badanidiyuru , Kshipra Bhawalkar , Haifeng Xu

We consider a revenue optimizing seller selling a single item to a buyer, on whose private value the seller has a noisy signal. We show that, when the signal is kept private, arbitrarily more revenue could potentially be extracted than if…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-07-20 Hu Fu , Chris Liaw , Pinyan Lu , Zhihao Gavin Tang

We consider the problem of learning optimal reserve price in repeated auctions against non-myopic bidders, who may bid strategically in order to gain in future rounds even if the single-round auctions are truthful. Previous algorithms,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-05-01 Zhiyi Huang , Jinyan Liu , Xiangning Wang

I construct a novel random double auction as a robust bilateral trading mechanism for a profit-maximizing intermediary who facilitates trade between a buyer and a seller. It works as follows. The intermediary publicly commits to charging a…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-05-11 Wanchang Zhang

We focus on online second price auctions, where bids are made sequentially, and the winning bidder pays the maximum of the second-highest bid and a seller specified starting price. For many such auctions, the seller does not see all the…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-23 Sourav Mukherjee , Ziqian Yang , Rohit K Patra , Kshitij Khare

We consider the pricing problem faced by a seller who assigns a price to a good that confers its benefits not only to its buyers, but also to other individuals around them. For example, a snow-blower is potentially useful not only to the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2013-05-02 Michal Feldman , David Kempe , Brendan Lucier , Renato Paes Leme

We consider a dynamic pricing problem for repeated contextual second-price auctions with multiple strategic buyers who aim to maximize their long-term time discounted utility. The seller has limited information on buyers' overall demand…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-08 Negin Golrezaei , Patrick Jaillet , Jason Cheuk Nam Liang

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…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-09-29 Martino Banchio , Andrzej Skrzypacz , Frank Yang

Reserve prices are widely used in practice. The problem of designing revenue-optimal auctions based on reserve price has drawn much attention in the auction design community. Although they have been extensively studied, most developments…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-07-22 Yifan Huang , Dong Hao , Zhiyi Fan , Yuhang Guo , Bin Li

We study the optimal behavior of a bidder in a real-time auction subject to the requirement that a specified collections of heterogeneous items be acquired within given time constraints. The problem facing this bidder is cast as a…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2021-11-17 Ryan J. Kinnear , Ravi R. Mazumdar , Peter Marbach