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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

Traditional methods for computing equilibria in auctions become computationally intractable as auction complexity increases, particularly in multi-item and dynamic auctions. This paper introduces a self-play based reinforcement learning…

General Economics · Economics 2024-10-21 Pranjal Rawat

If a two-player social welfare maximization problem does not admit a PTAS, we prove that any maximal-in-range truthful mechanism that runs in polynomial time cannot achieve an approximation factor better than 1/2. Moreover, for the k-player…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2009-12-18 Shaddin Dughmi , Hu Fu , Robert Kleinberg

We study the problem of allocating a set of indivisible items to agents with supermodular utilities to maximize the Nash social welfare. We show that the problem is NP-hard for any approximation factor.

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-31 Alon Bebchuk

Computational and economic results suggest that social welfare maximization and combinatorial auction design are much easier when bidders' valuations satisfy the "gross substitutes" condition. The goal of this paper is to evaluate…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-08-09 Tim Roughgarden , Inbal Talgam-Cohen , Jan Vondrák

We study the efficiency of the proportional allocation mechanism, that is widely used to allocate divisible resources. Each agent submits a bid for each divisible resource and receives a fraction proportional to her bids. We quantify the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-07-28 George Christodoulou , Alkmini Sgouritsa , Bo Tang

We present a new type of monotone submodular functions: \emph{multi-peak submodular functions}. Roughly speaking, given a family of sets $\cF$, we construct a monotone submodular function $f$ with a high value $f(S)$ for every set $S \in…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-03-20 Shahar Dobzinski , Jan Vondrak

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

This paper proves that the welfare of the first price auction in Bayes-Nash equilibrium is at least a $.743$-fraction of the welfare of the optimal mechanism assuming agents' values are independently distributed. The previous best bound was…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-03-20 Darrell Hoy , Sam Taggart , Zihe Wang

We study $k$-price auctions in a complete information environment and characterize all pure-strategy Nash equilibrium outcomes. In a setting with $n$ agents having ordered valuations, we show that any agent, except those with the lowest…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-07-09 Sumit Goel , Jeffrey Zeidel

We initiate the study of centralized algorithms for welfare-maximizing allocation of goods to buyers subject to average-value constraints. We show that this problem is NP-hard to approximate beyond a factor of $\frac{e}{e-1}$, and provide a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-09-09 Kshipra Bhawalkar , Zhe Feng , Anupam Gupta , Aranyak Mehta , David Wajc , Di Wang

We study the problem of approximating maximum Nash social welfare (NSW) when allocating m indivisible items among n asymmetric agents with submodular valuations. The NSW is a well-established notion of fairness and efficiency, defined as…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-01-01 Jugal Garg , Pooja Kulkarni , Rucha Kulkarni

According to the proportional allocation mechanism from the network optimization literature, users compete for a divisible resource -- such as bandwidth -- by submitting bids. The mechanism allocates to each user a fraction of the resource…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-02-17 Ioannis Caragiannis , Alexandros A. Voudouris

In recent work of Hazan and Krauthgamer (SICOMP 2011), it was shown that finding an $\eps$-approximate Nash equilibrium with near-optimal value in a two-player game is as hard as finding a hidden clique of size $O(\log n)$ in the random…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2011-04-20 Per Austrin , Mark Braverman , Eden Chlamtac

Fair allocation of indivisible goods studies allocating $m$ goods among $n$ agents in a fair manner. While fairness is a fundamental requirement in many real-world applications, it often conflicts with (economic) efficiency. This raises a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-03 Xiaolin Bu , Zihao Li , Shengxin Liu , Jiaxin Song , Biaoshuai Tao

We design an expected polynomial-time, truthful-in-expectation, (1-1/e)-approximation mechanism for welfare maximization in a fundamental class of combinatorial auctions. Our results apply to bidders with valuations that are m matroid rank…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2011-04-19 Shaddin Dughmi , Tim Roughgarden , Qiqi Yan

We study the problem of efficiently and fairly allocating a set of indivisible goods among agents with identical and additive valuations for the goods. The objective is to maximize the Nash social welfare, which is the geometric mean of the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-01-06 Asei Inoue , Yusuke Kobayashi

We study the problem of finding approximate Nash equilibria that satisfy certain conditions, such as providing good social welfare. In particular, we study the problem $\epsilon$-NE $\delta$-SW: find an $\epsilon$-approximate Nash…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-04-26 Argyrios Deligkas , John Fearnley , Rahul Savani

In this paper, we revisit the problem of approximating a pacing equilibrium in second-price auctions, introduced by Conitzer, Kroer, Sodomka, and Moses [Oper. Res. 2022]. We show that finding a constant-factor approximation of a pacing…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-01-05 Xi Chen , Yuhao Li

In this paper, we study the allocation of indivisible chores and consider the problem of finding a fair allocation that is approximately efficient. We shift our attention from the multiplicative approximation to the additive one. Our…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-22 Bo Li , Ankang Sun , Shiji Xing