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Related papers: Approximately Efficient Bilateral Trade

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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

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

We study the problem of a budget limited buyer who wants to buy a set of items, each from a different seller, to maximize her value. The budget feasible mechanism design problem aims to design a mechanism which incentivizes the sellers to…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-04-03 Pooya Jalaly , Eva Tardos

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 fair online resource allocation via non-monetary mechanisms, where multiple agents repeatedly share a resource without monetary transfers. Previous work has shown that every agent can guarantee $1/2$ of their ideal…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-05-27 David X. Lin , Daniel Hall , Giannis Fikioris , Siddhartha Banerjee , Éva Tardos

We characterise the set of dominant strategy incentive compatible (DSIC), strongly budget balanced (SBB), and ex-post individually rational (IR) mechanisms for the multi-unit bilateral trade setting. In such a setting there is a single…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-11-14 Matthias Gerstgrasser , Paul W. Goldberg , Bart de Keijzer , Philip Lazos , Alexander Skopalik

In online bilateral trade, a platform posts prices to incoming pairs of buyers and sellers that have private valuations for a certain good. If the price is lower than the buyers' valuation and higher than the sellers' valuation, then a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-05-24 François Bachoc , Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi , Tommaso Cesari , Roberto Colomboni

We study a natural combinatorial single-principal multi-agent contract design problem, in which a principal motivates a team of agents to exert effort toward a given task. At the heart of our model is a reward function, which maps the agent…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-04 Paul Duetting , Tomer Ezra , Michal Feldman , Thomas Kesselheim

The intuition that profit is optimized by maximizing marginal revenue is a guiding principle in microeconomics. In the classical auction theory for agents with linear utility and single-dimensional preferences, Bulow and Roberts (1989) show…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-06-06 Saeed Alaei , Hu Fu , Nima Haghpanah , Jason Hartline

We design novel mechanisms for welfare-maximization in two-sided markets. That is, there are buyers willing to purchase items and sellers holding items initially, both acting rationally and strategically in order to maximize utility. Our…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-06-01 Alexander Braun , Thomas Kesselheim

We study revenue maximization through sequential posted-price (SPP) mechanisms in single-dimensional settings with $n$ buyers and independent but not necessarily identical value distributions. We construct the SPP mechanisms by considering…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-01-11 Hedyeh Beyhaghi , Negin Golrezaei , Renato Paes Leme , Martin Pal , Balasubramanian Sivan

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 study revenue maximization in a buyer-seller setting where the seller has a single object and the buyer has both a private valuation and a private budget. Private budgets complicate the classic single-product monopoly problem, making…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-30 Juan Carlos Carbajal , Ahuva Mualem

Athey and Segal introduced an efficient budget-balanced mechanism for a dynamic stochastic model with quasilinear payoffs and private values, using the solution concept of perfect Bayesian equilibrium. We show that this implementation is…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-06-28 Endre Csóka

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

Bilateral trade models the task of intermediating between two strategic agents, a seller and a buyer, who wish to trade a good. We study this problem from the perspective of a profit-maximizing broker within an online learning framework,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Simone Di Gregorio , Paul Dütting , Federico Fusco , Chris Schwiegelshohn

Consider the problem of allocating goods to buyers through an auction. An auction is efficient if the resulting allocation maximizes total welfare, conditional on the information available. If buyers have private values, the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-05-23 Andrei Ciupan

We initiate the study of single-sample bilateral trade with a broker, drawing an analogy to the setting of single-sample bilateral trade without a broker considered in Babaioff et al. (2020) and Cai and Wu (2023). Our model captures the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-04 MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi , Gary Peng , Suho Shin

We study multi-agent contract design with combinatorial actions, under budget constraints, and for a broad class of objective functions, including profit (principal's utility), reward, and welfare. Our first result is a strong…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-11-26 Michal Feldman , Yoav Gal-Tzur , Tomasz Ponitka , Maya Schlesinger

This paper explores the gain maximization problem of two nations engaging in non-cooperative bilateral trade. Probabilistic model of an exchange of commodities under different price systems is considered. Volume of commodities exchanged…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2020-01-09 Tsotne Kutalia , Revaz Tevzadze