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Reinforcement learning has been shown to be an effective strategy for automatically training policies for challenging control problems. Focusing on non-cooperative multi-agent systems, we propose a novel reinforcement learning framework for…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-06-08 Kishor Jothimurugan , Suguman Bansal , Osbert Bastani , Rajeev Alur

Despite the numerous advances, reinforcement learning remains away from widespread acceptance for autonomous controller design as compared to classical methods due to lack of ability to effectively tackle the reality gap. The reliance on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-23 Narendra Patwardhan , Zequn Wang

We study the equilibria of uniform price auctions where many asymmetric bidders have flat demands up to their respective quantity constraints. We present an iterative procedure that systematically finds an equilibrium outcome as well as an…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-04-09 Kiho Yoon

We study the inefficiency of mixed equilibria, expressed as the price of anarchy, of all-pay auctions in three different environments: combinatorial, multi-unit and single-item auctions. First, we consider item-bidding combinatorial…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-08-06 George Christodoulou , Alkmini Sgouritsa , Bo Tang

We consider the problem of finding Nash equilibrium for two-player turn-based zero-sum games. Inspired by the AlphaGo Zero (AGZ) algorithm, we develop a Reinforcement Learning based approach. Specifically, we propose…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-26 Devavrat Shah , Varun Somani , Qiaomin Xie , Zhi Xu

We examine the complexity of computing welfare- and revenue-maximizing equilibria in autobidding second-price auctions subject to return-on-spend (RoS) constraints. We show that computing an autobidding equilibrium that approximates the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-11 Ioannis Anagnostides , Ian Gemp , Georgios Piliouras , Kelly Spendlove

Designing an incentive compatible auction that maximizes expected revenue is a central problem in Auction Design. Theoretical approaches to the problem have hit some limits in the past decades and analytical solutions are known for only a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-10-26 Jad Rahme , Samy Jelassi , Joan Bruna , S. Matthew Weinberg

In lowest unique bid auctions, $N$ players bid for an item. The winner is whoever places the \emph{lowest} bid, provided that it is also unique. We use a grand canonical approach to derive an analytical expression for the equilibrium…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-05-28 Simone Pigolotti , Sebastian Bernhardsson , Jeppe Juul , Gorm Galster , Pierpaolo Vivo

A reinforcement learning agent tries to maximize its cumulative payoff by interacting in an unknown environment. It is important for the agent to explore suboptimal actions as well as to pick actions with highest known rewards. Yet, in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-23 Reazul Hasan Russel

Auctions are becoming an increasingly popular method for transacting business, especially over the Internet. This article presents a general approach to building autonomous bidding agents to bid in multiple simultaneous auctions for…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2011-06-28 J. A. Csirik , M. L. Littman , D. McAllester , R. E. Schapire , P. Stone

This paper investigates the so-called reward-balancing methods, a novel class of algorithms for solving discounted-return reinforcement learning (RL) problems. These methods consist of iteratively adjusting the reward function to transform…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-23 Simone Baroncini , Bahman Gharesifard , Giuseppe Notarstefano

Game theory finds nowadays a broad range of applications in engineering and machine learning. However, in a derivative-free, expensive black-box context, very few algorithmic solutions are available to find game equilibria. Here, we propose…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-02-28 Victor Picheny , Mickael Binois , Abderrahmane Habbal

The task of computing approximate Nash equilibria in large zero-sum extensive-form games has received a tremendous amount of attention due mainly to the Annual Computer Poker Competition. Immediately after its inception, two competing and…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2014-11-19 Kevin Waugh , J. Andrew Bagnell

We present an extensive analysis of the key problem of learning optimal reserve prices for generalized second price auctions. We describe two algorithms for this task: one based on density estimation, and a novel algorithm benefiting from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-06-10 Mehryar Mohri , Andres Munoz Medina

We consider auctions in which greedy algorithms, paired with first-price or critical-price payment rules, are used to resolve multi-parameter combinatorial allocation problems. We study the price of anarchy for social welfare in such…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-12-02 Brendan Lucier , Allan Borodin

In settings where full incentive-compatibility is not available, such as core-constraint combinatorial auctions and budget-balanced combinatorial exchanges, we may wish to design mechanisms that are as incentive-compatible as possible. This…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-03-24 Benjamin Lubin

Market-based mechanisms such as auctions are being studied as an appropriate means for resource allocation in distributed and mulitagent decision problems. When agents value resources in combination rather than in isolation, they must often…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-01-30 Craig Boutilier , Moises Goldszmidt , Bikash Sabata

We study the problem of learning revenue-optimal multi-bidder auctions from samples when the samples of bidders' valuations can be adversarially corrupted or drawn from distributions that are adversarially perturbed. First, we prove tight…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-07-14 Wenshuo Guo , Michael I. Jordan , Manolis Zampetakis

We tackle a fundamental problem in empirical game-theoretic analysis (EGTA), that of learning equilibria of simulation-based games. Such games cannot be described in analytical form; instead, a black-box simulator can be queried to obtain…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-06-03 Enrique Areyan Viqueira , Cyrus Cousins , Eli Upfal , Amy Greenwald

In this paper, we introduce a novel, non-recursive, maximal matching algorithm for double auctions, which aims to maximize the amount of commodities to be traded. It differs from the usual equilibrium matching, which clears a market at the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2013-04-12 Jinzhong Niu , Simon Parsons