Related papers: Distributional Robustness: From Pricing to Auction…
We study the problem of designing posted-price mechanisms in order to sell a single unit of a single item within a finite period of time. Motivated by real-world problems, such as, e.g., long-term rental of rooms and apartments, we assume…
We study risk-free bidding strategies in combinatorial auctions with incomplete information. Specifically, what is the maximum profit that a complement-free (subadditive) bidder can guarantee in a multi-item combinatorial auction? Suppose…
We consider the classical mathematical economics problem of {\em Bayesian optimal mechanism design} where a principal aims to optimize expected revenue when allocating resources to self-interested agents with preferences drawn from a known…
We consider the problem of dynamic pricing with limited supply. A seller has $k$ identical items for sale and is facing $n$ potential buyers ("agents") that are arriving sequentially. Each agent is interested in buying one item. Each…
It is well-known that optimal (i.e., revenue-maximizing) selling mechanisms in multidimensional type spaces may involve randomization. We obtain conditions under which deterministic mechanisms are optimal for selling two identical,…
In mechanism design it is typical to impose incentive compatibility and then derive an optimal mechanism subject to this constraint. By replacing the incentive compatibility requirement with the goal of minimizing expected ex post regret,…
We consider the problem of designing revenue-optimal auctions for selling two items and bidders' valuations are independent among bidders but negatively correlated among items. In this paper, we obtain the closed-form optimal auction for…
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…
In the standard formulation of mechanism design, a key assumption is that the designer has reliable information and technology to determine a prior distribution on types of the agents. In the meanwhile, as pointed out by the Wilson's…
Optimizing within the affine maximizer auctions (AMA) is an effective approach for revenue maximizing mechanism design. The AMA mechanisms are strategy-proof and individually rational (if the agents' valuations for the outcomes are…
A seller sells an object over time but is uncertain how the buyer learns their willingness-to-pay. We consider informational robustness under \textit{limited commitment}, where the seller offers a price \textit{each period} to maximize…
The transition to auto-bidding in online advertising has shifted the focus of auction theory from quasi-linear utility maximization to value maximization subject to financial constraints. We study mechanism design for buyers with private…
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,…
Mechanism design for one-sided markets has been investigated for several decades in economics and in computer science. More recently, there has been an increased attention on mechanisms for two-sided markets, in which buyers and sellers act…
Robustness to distributional shift is one of the key challenges of contemporary machine learning. Attaining such robustness is the goal of distributionally robust optimization, which seeks a solution to an optimization problem that is…
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…
Auctions are important mechanisms extensively implemented in various markets, e.g., search engines' keyword auctions, antique auctions, etc. Finding an optimal auction mechanism is extremely difficult due to the constraints of imperfect…
In budget-feasible mechanism design, a buyer wishes to procure a set of items of maximum value from self-interested players. We have a valuation function $v:2^U \to \mathbb{R}_+$, where $U$ is the set of all items, where $v(S)$ specifies…
I study the optimal allocation of positional goods in the presence of externalities arising from consumers' concerns about relative consumption. Applications include luxury goods, priority services, education, and organizational…
We study the bidding problem in repeated uniform price multi-unit auctions from the perspective of a value-maximizing buyer. The buyer aims to maximize their cumulative value over $T$ rounds while adhering to per-round return-on-investment…