Related papers: The Limits of Search Algorithms
When online sellers use AI learning algorithms to automatically compete on e-commerce platforms, there is concern that they will learn to coordinate on higher than competitive prices. However, this concern was primarily raised in…
In markets where algorithmic data processing is increasingly prevalent, recommendation algorithms can substantially affect trade and welfare. We consider a setting in which an algorithm recommends a product based on its value to the buyer…
This paper develops learning-augmented algorithms for energy trading in volatile electricity markets. The basic problem is to sell (or buy) $k$ units of energy for the highest revenue (lowest cost) over uncertain time-varying prices, which…
In the online (time-series) search problem, a player is presented with a sequence of prices which are revealed in an online manner. In the standard definition of the problem, for each revealed price, the player must decide irrevocably…
In an online contract selection problem there is a seller which offers a set of contracts to sequentially arriving buyers whose types are drawn from an unknown distribution. If there exists a profitable contract for the buyer in the offered…
In a sponsored search auction, decisions about how to rank ads impose tradeoffs between objectives such as revenue and welfare. In this paper, we examine how these tradeoffs should be made. We begin by arguing that the most natural solution…
Internet search companies sell advertisement slots based on users' search queries via an auction. While there has been a lot of attention on the auction process and its game-theoretic aspects, our focus is on the advertisers. In particular,…
Motivated by applications where a system must remain operational via continual procurement of contracts, we study two online contract selection problems under uncertain prices. At each time step, a price drawn from a known distribution is…
Buying and selling of data online has increased substantially over the last few years. Several frameworks have already been proposed that study query pricing in theory and practice. The key guiding principle in these works is the notion of…
Sponsored search becomes an easy platform to match potential consumers' intent with merchants' advertising. Advertisers express their willingness to pay for each keyword in terms of bids to the search engine. When a user's query matches the…
We analyze digital markets where a monopolist platform uses data to match multiproduct sellers with heterogeneous consumers who can purchase both on and off the platform. The platform sells targeted ads to sellers that recommend their…
Many-to-many matching with contracts is studied in the framework of revealed preferences. All preferences are described by choice functions that satisfy natural conditions. Under a no-externality assumption individual preferences can be…
This paper studies Markov perfect equilibria in a repeated duopoly model where sellers choose algorithms. An algorithm is a mapping from the competitor's price to own price. Once set, algorithms respond quickly. Customers arrive randomly…
Motivated by the dynamic assortment offerings and item pricings occurring in e-commerce, we study a general problem of allocating finite inventories to heterogeneous customers arriving sequentially. We analyze this problem under the…
This paper develops algorithms to solve strong-substitutes product-mix auctions. That is, it finds competitive equilibrium prices and quantities for agents who use this auction's bidding language to truthfully express their…
We study markets where firms compete for consumer attention by subsidizing costly product inspection. These subsidies do not change product quality, but they alter the order in which consumers search by lowering inspection costs. We…
We present an algorithm for constructing an optimal slate of sponsored search advertisements which respects the ordering that is the outcome of a generalized second price auction, but which must also accommodate complicating factors such as…
The optimal price of each firm falls in the search cost of consumers, in the limit to the monopoly price, despite the exit of lower-value consumers in response to costlier search. Exit means that fewer inframarginal consumers remain. The…
We study revenue optimization pricing algorithms for repeated posted-price auctions where a seller interacts with a single strategic buyer that holds a fixed private valuation. We show that, in the case when both the seller and the buyer…
Online platforms, such as Airbnb, hotels.com, Amazon, Uber and Lyft, can control and optimize many aspects of product search to improve the efficiency of marketplaces. Here we focus on a common model, called the discriminatory control…