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We consider a revenue-maximizing seller with $m$ heterogeneous items and a single buyer whose valuation $v$ for the items may exhibit both substitutes (i.e., for some $S, T$, $v(S \cup T) < v(S) + v(T)$) and complements (i.e., for some $S,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-04-11 Alon Eden , Michal Feldman , Ophir Friedler , Inbal Talgam-Cohen , S. Matthew Weinberg

We investigate a seller's revenue-maximizing mechanism in a setting where a desirable good is sold together with an undesirable bad (e.g., advertisements) that generates third-party revenue. The buyer's private information is…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-02-02 Kolagani Paramahamsa

A competitive market is modeled as a game of incomplete information. One player observes some payoff-relevant state and can sell (possibly noisy) messages thereof to the other, whose willingness to pay is contingent on their own beliefs. We…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-05-02 Thomas Falconer , Anubhav Ratha , Jalal Kazempour , Pierre Pinson , Maryam Kamgarpour

When selling many goods with independent valuations, we develop a distributionally robust framework, consisting of a two-player game between seller and nature. The seller has only limited knowledge about the value distribution. The seller…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-30 Tim S. G. van Eck , Pieter Kleer , Johan S. H. van Leeuwaarden

A fundamental economic question is that of designing revenue-maximizing mechanisms in dynamic environments. This paper considers a simple yet compelling market model to tackle this question, where forward-looking buyers arrive at the market…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-10-16 Jose Correa , Andres Cristi , Laura Vargas Koch

We provide simple and approximately revenue-optimal mechanisms in the multi-item multi-bidder settings. We unify and improve all previous results, as well as generalize the results to broader cases. In particular, we prove that the better…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-08-27 Yang Cai , Mingfei Zhao

We study the problem of designing a two-sided market (double auction) to maximize the gains from trade (social welfare) under the constraints of (dominant-strategy) incentive compatibility and budget-balance. Our goal is to do so for an…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-06-21 Moshe Babaioff , Amitai Frey , Noam Nisan

I study the welfare-maximizing allocation of heterogeneous goods when monetary transfers are prohibited. Agents have private values, and the designer chooses a mechanism subject to incentive compatibility and aggregate supply constraints. I…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-26 Filip Tokarski

We introduce a dynamic mechanism design problem in which the designer wants to offer for sale an item to an agent, and another item to the same agent at some point in the future. The agent's joint distribution of valuations for the two…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-05-22 Christos Papadimitriou , George Pierrakos , Christos-Alexandros Psomas , Aviad Rubinstein

We study a classic Bayesian mechanism design setting of monopoly problem for an additive buyer in the presence of budgets. In this setting a monopolist seller with $m$ heterogeneous items faces a single buyer and seeks to maximize her…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-10-09 Yu Cheng , Nick Gravin , Kamesh Munagala , Kangning Wang

We study mechanisms for selling a single item when buyers have private costs for participating in the mechanism. An agent's participation cost can also be interpreted as an outside option value that she must forego to participate. This…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-11-07 Yannai A. Gonczarowski , Nicole Immorlica , Yingkai Li , Brendan Lucier

A monopolist seller of multiple goods screens a buyer whose type is initially unknown to both but drawn from a commonly known distribution. The buyer privately learns about his type via a signal. We derive the seller's optimal mechanism in…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2021-05-27 Rahul Deb , Anne-Katrin Roesler

Selling a perfectly divisible item to potential buyers is a fundamental task with apparent applications to pricing communication bandwidth and cloud computing services. Surprisingly, despite the rich literature on single-item auctions,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-02-11 Ioannis Caragiannis , Zhile Jiang , Apostolis Kerentzis

We consider a monopoly information holder selling information to a budget-constrained decision maker, who may benefit from the seller's information. The decision maker has a utility function that depends on his action and an uncertain state…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-02-18 Yiling Chen , Haifeng Xu , Shuran Zheng

We study the problem of selling information to a data-buyer who faces a decision problem under uncertainty. We consider the classic Bayesian decision-theoretic model pioneered by [Blackwell, 1951, 1953]. Initially, the data buyer has only…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-02-21 Dirk Bergemann , Yang Cai , Grigoris Velegkas , Mingfei Zhao

We study the mechanism design problem of selling $k$ items to unit-demand buyers with private valuations for the items. A buyer either participates directly in the auction or is represented by an intermediary, who represents a subset of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-11-23 Gagan Aggarwal , Kshipra Bhawalkar , Guru Guruganesh , Andres Perlroth

Myerson's seminal characterization of the revenue-optimal auction for a single item \cite{myerson1981optimal} remains a cornerstone of mechanism design. However, generalizing this framework to multi-item settings has proven exceptionally…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-08 Marios Mertzanidis , Athina Terzoglou

In the private values single object auction model, we construct a satisfactory mechanism - a symmetric, dominant strategy incentive compatible, and budget-balanced mechanism. Our mechanism allocates the object to the highest valued agent…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-10-04 Debasis Mishra , Tridib Sharma

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,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-07-23 MohammadHossein Bateni , Sina Dehghani , MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi , Saeed Seddighin

We study the problem of characterizing revenue optimal auctions for single-minded buyers. Each buyer is interested only in a specific bundle of items and has a value for the same. Both his bundle and its value are his private information.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2010-09-14 Vineet Abhishek , Bruce Hajek