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We consider a principal seller with $m$ heterogeneous products to sell to an additive buyer over independent items. The principal can offer an arbitrary menu of product bundles, but faces competition from smaller and more agile single-item…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-06-21 Moshe Babaioff , Linda Cai , Brendan Lucier

We study a classical Bayesian mechanism design problem where a seller is selling multiple items to multiple buyers. We consider the case where the seller has costs to produce the items, and these costs are private information to the seller.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-04-20 Yang Cai , Mingfei Zhao

We study the efficiency of simple combinatorial auctions for the allocation of a set of items to a set of agents, with private subadditive valuation functions and budget constraints. The class we consider includes all auctions that allocate…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-07-29 Alexandros A. Voudouris

We study the problem of repeatedly auctioning off an item to one of $k$ bidders where: a) bidders have a per-round individual rationality constraint, b) bidders may leave the mechanism at any point, and c) the bidders' valuations are…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-03-03 Mark Braverman , Jon Schneider , S. Matthew Weinberg

We study the pricing query complexity of revenue maximization for a single buyer whose private valuation is drawn from an unknown distribution. In this setting, the seller must learn the optimal monopoly price by posting prices and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Wei Tang , Yifan Wang , Mengxiao Zhang

We initiate a study of algorithms with a focus on the computational complexity of individual elements, and introduce the fragile complexity of comparison-based algorithms as the maximal number of comparisons any individual element takes…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-09-04 Peyman Afshani , Rolf Fagerberg , David Hammer , Riko Jacob , Irina Kostitsyna , Ulrich Meyer , Manuel Penschuck , Nodari Sitchinava

We consider the fundamental problem of designing a truthful single-item auction with the challenging objective of extracting a large fraction of the highest agent valuation as revenue. Following a recent trend in algorithm design, we assume…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-01-25 Ioannis Caragiannis , Georgios Kalantzis

A multi-product monopolist faces a buyer who is privately informed about his valuations for the goods. As is well-known, optimal mechanisms are in general complicated, while simple mechanisms -- such as pure bundling or separate sales --…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-09-03 Mira Frick , Ryota Iijima , Yuhta Ishii

We study revenue maximization in multi-item multi-bidder auctions under the natural item-independence assumption - a classical problem in Multi-Dimensional Bayesian Mechanism Design. One of the biggest challenges in this area is developing…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-04-12 Yang Cai , Argyris Oikonomou , Mingfei Zhao

Motivated by recent progress on pricing in the AI literature, we study marketplaces that contain multiple vendors offering identical or similar products and unit-demand buyers with different valuations on these vendors. The objective of…

We study auction design in the celebrated interdependence model introduced by Milgrom and Weber [1982], where a mechanism designer allocates a good, maximizing the value of the agent who receives it, while inducing truthfulness using…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-20 Patrick Loiseau , Simon Mauras , Minrui Xu

With spectrum auctions as our prime motivation, in this paper we analyze combinatorial auctions where agents' valuations exhibit complementarities. Assuming that the agents only value bundles of size at most $k$ and also assuming that we…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-06-07 Dengwang Tang , Vijay Subramanian

The first-price auction is popular in practice for its simplicity and transparency. Moreover, its potential virtues grow in complex settings where incentive compatible auctions may generate little or no revenue. Unfortunately, the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2013-04-30 Darrell Hoy , Kamal Jain , Christopher A. Wilkens

Many algorithms that are originally designed without explicitly considering incentive properties are later combined with simple pricing rules and used as mechanisms. The resulting mechanisms are often natural and simple to understand. But…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-12-01 Paul Dütting , Thomas Kesselheim , Éva Tardos

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-08-03 Moshe Babaioff , Nicole Immorlica , Brendan Lucier , S. Matthew Weinberg

This paper studies a simplicity notion in a mechanism design setting in which agents do not necessarily share a common prior. I develop a model in which agents participate in a prior-free game of (coarse) information acquisition followed by…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-10-10 Joseph Feffer

We study online combinatorial auctions with production costs proposed by Blum et al. using the online primal dual framework. In this model, buyers arrive online, and the seller can produce multiple copies of each item subject to a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-11-18 Zhiyi Huang , Anthony Kim

We define and investigate a property of mechanisms that we call "strategic simplicity," and that is meant to capture the idea that, in strategically simple mechanisms, strategic choices require limited strategic sophistication. We define a…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2018-12-04 Tilman Borgers , Jiangtao Li

This paper investigates the conditions under which a given circular (synchronizing) DFA is \emph{simple} (sometimes referred to as \emph{primitive}) and when it is \emph{irreducible}. Our notion of irreducibility slightly differs from the…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-27 Riccardo Venturi

The assortment problem in revenue management is the problem of deciding which subset of products to offer to consumers in order to maximise revenue. A simple and natural strategy is to select the best assortment out of all those that are…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-02-22 Gerardo Berbeglia , Gwenaël Joret