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Related papers: Multi-Unit Combinatorial Prophet Inequalities

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We consider the problem of fairly allocating a combination of divisible and indivisible goods. While fairness criteria like envy-freeness (EF) and proportionality (PROP) can always be achieved for divisible goods, only their relaxed…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-04-30 Bo Li , Zihao Li , Shengxin Liu , Zekai Wu

Auctions for perishable goods such as internet ad inventory need to make real-time allocation and pricing decisions as the supply of the good arrives in an online manner, without knowing the entire supply in advance. These allocation and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-10-05 Gagan Goel , Vahab Mirrokni , Renato Paes Leme

In this paper, we introduce an over-time variant of the well-known prophet inequality with i.i.d. random variables. Instead of stopping with one realized value at some point in the process, we decide for each step how long we select the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-09-08 Andreas Abels , Elias Pitschmann , Daniel Schmand

Online Resource Allocation addresses the problem of efficiently allocating limited resources to buyers with incomplete knowledge of future requests. In our setting, buyers arrive sequentially requesting a set of items, each with a value…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-11 Dimitris Fotakis , Charalampos Platanos , Thanos Tolias

We investigate prophet inequalities with competitive ratios approaching $1$, seeking to generalize $k$-uniform matroids. We first show that large girth does not suffice: for all $k$, there exists a matroid of girth $\geq k$ and a prophet…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-11-21 Noga Alon , Nick Gravin , Tristan Pollner , Aviad Rubinstein , Hongao Wang , S. Matthew Weinberg , Qianfan Zhang

We study the prophet inequality, a fundamental problem in online decision-making and optimal stopping, in a practical setting where rewards are observed only through noisy realizations and reward distributions are unknown. At each stage,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-03 Jung-hun Kim , Vianney Perchet

We consider a robust version of the revenue maximization problem, where a single seller wishes to sell $n$ items to a single unit-demand buyer. In this robust version, the seller knows the buyer's marginal value distribution for each item…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-08-27 Moshe Babaioff , Michal Feldman , Yannai A. Gonczarowski , Brendan Lucier , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

For Bayesian combinatorial auctions, we present a general framework for approximately reducing the mechanism design problem for multiple buyers to single buyer sub-problems. Our framework can be applied to any setting which roughly…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-06-18 Saeed Alaei

In digital goods auctions, there is an auctioneer who sells an item with unlimited supply to a set of potential buyers, and the objective is to design truthful auction to maximize the total profit of the auctioneer. Motivated from an…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2011-07-27 Nick Gravin , Pinyan Lu

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…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-05-14 Will Ma , David Simchi-Levi

In this paper, we introduce a Bayesian revenue-maximizing mechanism design model where the items have fixed, exogenously-given prices. Buyers are unit-demand and have an ordinal ranking over purchasing either one of these items at its given…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-10-16 Will Ma

In the classical prophet inequality, a gambler faces a sequence of items, whose values are drawn independently from known distributions. Upon the arrival of each item, its value is realized and the gambler either accepts it and the game…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-04-05 Bo Peng , Zhihao Gavin Tang

In modern sample-driven Prophet Inequality, an adversary chooses a sequence of $n$ items with values $v_1, v_2, \ldots, v_n$ to be presented to a decision maker (DM). The process follows in two phases. In the first phase (sampling phase),…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-09-30 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Mona Mohammadi , Raimundo Saona

The current art in optimal combinatorial auctions is limited to handling the case of single units of multiple items, with each bidder bidding on exactly one bundle (single minded bidders). This paper extends the current art by proposing an…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2010-04-27 Sujit Gujar , Y Narahari

Randomized mechanisms, which map a set of bids to a probability distribution over outcomes rather than a single outcome, are an important but ill-understood area of computational mechanism design. We investigate the role of randomized…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2009-04-17 Patrick Briest , Shuchi Chawla , Robert Kleinberg , S. Matthew Weinberg

We study the communication complexity of welfare maximization in combinatorial auctions with bidders from either a standard valuation class (which require exponential communication to explicitly state, such as subadditive or XOS), or…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Frederick V. Qiu , S. Matthew Weinberg , Qianfan Zhang

We study a continuous and infinite time horizon counterpart to the classic prophet inequality, which we term the stationary prophet inequality problem. Here, copies of a good arrive and perish according to Poisson point processes. Buyers…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-07-23 Kristen Kessel , Amin Saberi , Ali Shameli , David Wajc

Multi-unit auctions are a paradigmatic model, where a seller brings multiple units of a good, while several buyers bring monetary endowments. It is well known that Walrasian equilibria do not always exist in this model, however compelling…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-10-10 Simina Brânzei , Aris Filos-Ratsikas , Peter Bro Miltersen , Yulong Zeng

The I.I.D. Prophet Inequality is a fundamental problem where, given $n$ independent random variables $X_1,\dots,X_n$ drawn from a known distribution $\mathcal{D}$, one has to decide at every step $i$ whether to stop and accept $X_i$ or…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-12-02 Vasilis Livanos , Ruta Mehta

Two general algorithms based on opportunity costs are given for approximating a revenue-maximizing set of bids an auctioneer should accept, in a combinatorial auction in which each bidder offers a price for some subset of the available…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Karhan Akcoglu , James Aspnes , Bhaskar DasGupta , Ming-Yang Kao