Related papers: Finite-Sample Average Bid Auction
Traditionally, the Bayesian optimal auction design problem has been considered either when the bidder values are i.i.d., or when each bidder is individually identifiable via her value distribution. The latter is a reasonable approach when…
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 study the design of mechanisms in combinatorial auction domains. We focus on settings where the auction is repeated, motivated by auctions for licenses or advertising space. We consider models of agent behaviour in which they either…
We consider the sample complexity of revenue maximization for multiple bidders in unrestricted multi-dimensional settings. Specifically, we study the standard model of $n$ additive bidders whose values for $m$ heterogeneous items are drawn…
In this paper we define a new auction, called the Draw auction. It is based on the implementation of a draw when a minimum price of sale is not reached. We find that a Bayesian Nash equilibrium is reached in the Draw auction when each…
In many first-price auctions, bidders face considerable strategic uncertainty: They cannot perfectly anticipate the other bidders' bidding behavior. We propose a model in which bidders do not know the entire distribution of opponent bids…
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…
Simultaneous ascending auctions present agents with the exposure problem: bidding to acquire a bundle risks the possibility of obtaining an undesired subset of the goods. Auction theory provides little guidance for dealing with this…
We develop extensions to auction theory results that are useful in real life scenarios. 1. Since valuations are generally positive we first develop approximations using the log-normal distribution. This would be useful for many finance…
The existing literature on optimal auctions focuses on optimizing the expected revenue of the seller, and is appropriate for risk-neutral sellers. In this paper, we identify good mechanisms for risk-averse sellers. As is standard in the…
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…
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…
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…
We present a general framework for proving polynomial sample complexity bounds for the problem of learning from samples the best auction in a class of "simple" auctions. Our framework captures all of the most prominent examples of "simple"…
We study a mechanism design problem where a seller aims to allocate a good to multiple bidders, each with a private value. The seller supports or favors a specific group, referred to as the minority group. Specifically, the seller requires…
This work proposes a bid shading strategy for first-price auctions as a measure-valued optimization problem. We consider a standard parametric form for bid shading and formulate the problem as convex optimization over the joint distribution…
We study a class of iterative combinatorial auctions which can be viewed as subgradient descent methods for the problem of pricing bundles to balance supply and demand. We provide concrete convergence rates for auctions in this class,…
This letter considers the design of an auction mechanism to sell the object of a seller when the buyers quantize their private value estimates regarding the object prior to communicating them to the seller. The designed auction mechanism…
The auction of a single indivisible item is one of the most celebrated problems in mechanism design with transfers. Despite its simplicity, it provides arguably the cleanest and most insightful results in the literature. When the…
We consider a monopolist seller with $n$ heterogeneous items, facing a single buyer. The buyer has a value for each item drawn independently according to (non-identical) distributions, and her value for a set of items is additive. The…