English
Related papers

Related papers: Robust Auction Design with Support Information

200 papers

Auto-bidding has recently become a popular feature in ad auctions. This feature enables advertisers to simply provide high-level constraints and goals to an automated agent, which optimizes their auction bids on their behalf. In this paper,…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-05-15 Yeganeh Alimohammadi , Aranyak Mehta , Andres Perlroth

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-07-16 Ashwinkumar Badanidiyuru , Kshipra Bhawalkar , Haifeng Xu

Most of the work in the auction design literature assumes that bidders behave rationally based on the information available for every individual auction, and the revelation principle enables designers to restrict their efforts to incentive…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-05-14 Juncheng Li , Pingzhong Tang

We analyze a nonlinear pricing model where the seller controls both product pricing (screening) and buyer information about their own values (persuasion). We prove that the optimal mechanism always consists of finitely many signals and…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-03-11 Dirk Bergemann , Tibor Heumann , Stephen Morris

Sellers in online markets face the challenge of determining the right time to sell in view of uncertain future offers. Classical stopping theory assumes that sellers have full knowledge of the value distributions, and leverage this…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-06-30 Pieter Kleer , Johan van Leeuwaarden

We study the revenue comparison problem of auctions when the seller has a maxmin expected utility preference. The seller holds a set of priors around some reference belief, interpreted as an approximating model of the true probability law…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-11-24 Sosung Baik , Sung-Ha Hwang

We provide algorithms that learn simple auctions whose revenue is approximately optimal in multi-item multi-bidder settings, for a wide range of valuations including unit-demand, additive, constrained additive, XOS, and subadditive. We…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-09-04 Yang Cai , Constantinos Daskalakis

In a multiple-object auction, every bidder tries to win as many objects as possible with a bidding algorithm. This paper studies position-randomized auctions, which form a special class of multiple-object auctions where a bidding algorithm…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Yuyu Chen , Ming-Yang Kao , Hsueh-I Lu

We study a single-buyer pricing problem with unreliable side information, motivated by the increasing use of AI-assisted decision-making and LLM-based predictions. The seller observes a private sample that may be either accurate (coinciding…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-06 Zhihao Gavin Tang , Yixin Tao , Shixin Wang

First-price auctions have recently gained significant traction in digital advertising markets, exemplified by Google's transition from second-price to first-price auctions. Unlike in second-price auctions, where bidding one's private…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Zihao Hu , Xiaoyu Fan , Yuan Yao , Jiheng Zhang , Zhengyuan Zhou

We study optimal auction design in an independent private values environment where bidders can endogenously -- but at a cost -- improve information about their own valuations. The optimal mechanism is two-stage: at stage-1 bidders register…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-12-09 Kemal Ozbek

We study deterministic monopoly pricing under partial knowledge of the market, where the seller has access only to summary statistics of the valuation distribution, such as the mean, dispersion, and maximum value. Using tools from…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-09 Tim S. G. van Eck , Pieter Kleer , Johan S. H. van Leeuwaarden

This paper studies some basic problems in a multiple-object auction model using methodologies from theoretical computer science. We are especially concerned with situations where an adversary bidder knows the bidding algorithms of all the…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Ming-Yang Kao , Junfeng Qi , Lei Tan

A fundamental assumption in classical mechanism design is that buyers are perfect optimizers. However, in practice, buyers may be limited by their computational capabilities or a lack of information, and may not be able to perfectly…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-03-28 Santiago Balseiro , Omar Besbes , Francisco Castro

Problem definition: Traditional monopoly pricing assumes sellers have full information about consumer valuations. We consider monopoly pricing under limited information, where a seller only knows the mean, variance and support of the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-30 Tim S. G. van Eck , Pieter Kleer , Johan S. H. van Leeuwaarden

We study the problem of social welfare maximization in bilateral trade, where two agents, a buyer and a seller, trade an indivisible item. We consider arguably the simplest form of mechanisms -- the fixed-price mechanisms, where the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-06-21 Yang Cai , Jinzhao Wu

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

Single-shot auctions are commonly used as a means to sell goods, for example when selling ad space or allocating radio frequencies, however devising mechanisms for auctions with multiple bidders and multiple items can be complicated. It has…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-02 Alex Stein , Avi Schwarzschild , Michael Curry , Tom Goldstein , John Dickerson

The growing demand for data and AI-generated digital goods, such as personalized written content and artwork, necessitates effective pricing and feedback mechanisms that account for uncertain utility and costly production. Motivated by…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-06-06 Zachary Robertson , Oluwasanmi Koyejo

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