Related papers: Signaling in Posted Price Auctions
We study signaling in Bayesian ad auctions, in which bidders' valuations depend on a random, unknown state of nature. The auction mechanism has complete knowledge of the actual state of nature, and it can send signals to bidders so as to…
This paper studies a joint design problem where a seller can design both the signal structures for the agents to learn their values, and the allocation and payment rules for selling the item. In his seminal work, Myerson (1981) shows how to…
Signaling is an important topic in the study of asymmetric information in economic settings. In particular, the transparency of information available to a seller in an auction setting is a question of major interest. We introduce the study…
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…
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…
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…
We provide a Polynomial Time Approximation Scheme (PTAS) for the Bayesian optimal multi-item multi-bidder auction problem under two conditions. First, bidders are independent, have additive valuations and are from the same population.…
We study information design in click-through auctions, in which the bidders/advertisers bid for winning an opportunity to show their ads but only pay for realized clicks. The payment may or may not happen, and its probability is called the…
Emek et al. presented a model of probabilistic single-item second price auctions where an auctioneer who is informed about the type of an item for sale, broadcasts a signal about this type to uninformed bidders. They proved that finding the…
We design algorithms for computing approximately revenue-maximizing {\em sequential posted-pricing mechanisms (SPM)} in $K$-unit auctions, in a standard Bayesian model. A seller has $K$ copies of an item to sell, and there are $n$ buyers,…
We study the limits of an information intermediary in the classical Bayesian auction, where a revenue-maximizing seller sells one item to $n$ buyers with independent private values. In addition, we have an intermediary who knows the buyers'…
We study the power of price discrimination via an intermediary in bilateral trade, when there is a revenue-maximizing seller selling an item to a buyer with a private value drawn from a prior. Between the seller and the buyer, there is an…
Consider a trade market with one seller and multiple buyers. The seller aims to sell an indivisible item and maximize their revenue. This paper focuses on a simple and popular mechanism--the fixed-price mechanism. Unlike the standard…
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…
We consider the problem of an auctioneer who faces the task of selling a good (drawn from a known distribution) to a set of buyers, when the auctioneer does not have the capacity to describe to the buyers the exact identity of the good that…
In digital advertising, online platforms allocate ad impressions through real-time auctions, where advertisers typically rely on autobidding agents to optimize bids on their behalf. Unlike traditional auctions for physical goods, the value…
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…
Bayesian persuasion is the study of information sharing policies among strategic agents. A prime example is signaling in online ad auctions: what information should a platform signal to an advertiser regarding a user when selling the…
Many spectrum auction mechanisms have been proposed for spectrum allocation problem, and unfortunately, few of them protect the bid privacy of bidders and achieve good social efficiency. In this paper, we propose PPS, a Privacy Preserving…
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…