Related papers: Single-Item Auctions with a Monopolist Intermediar…
We address the problem of improving bidders' strategies in prior-dependent revenue-maximizing auctions and introduce a simple and generic method to design novel bidding strategies if the seller uses past bids to optimize her mechanism. We…
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…
In the design and analysis of revenue-maximizing auctions, auction performance is typically measured with respect to a prior distribution over inputs. The most obvious source for such a distribution is past data. The goal is to understand…
We consider auctions with N+1 bidders. Of these, N are symmetric and N+1 is "sufficiently strong" relative to the others. The auction is a "tournament" in which the first N players bid to win the right to compete with N+1. The bids of the…
We study a basic auction design problem with online supply. There are two unit-demand bidders and two types of items. The first item type will arrive first for sure, and the second item type may or may not arrive. The auctioneer has to…
A monopolistic seller aims to sell an indivisible item to multiple potential buyers. Each buyer's valuation depends on their private type and the item's quality. The seller can observe the quality but it is unknown to buyers. This quality…
This paper reexamines the classic problem of revenue maximization in single-item auctions with $n$ buyers under the lens of the robust optimization framework. The celebrated Myerson's mechanism is the format that maximizes the seller's…
We study auction design when a seller relies on machine-learning predictions of bidders' valuations that may be unreliable. Motivated by modern ML systems that are often accurate but occasionally fail in a way that is essentially…
We study the classic single-item auction setting of Myerson, but under the assumption that the buyers' values for the item are distributed over finite supports. Using strong LP duality and polyhedral theory, we rederive various key results…
High-stakes auctions are often preceded by nonbinding communication between bidders and the seller. Motivated by these practices, this paper examines a two-period model in which two bidders send private cheap talk messages to the seller…
Sequential auctions for identical items with unit-demand, private-value buyers are common and often occur periodically without end, as new bidders replace departing ones. We model bidder uncertainty by introducing a probability that a…
Consider a trade market with one seller and multiple buyers. The seller aims to sell an indivisible item and maximize their revenue. This paper focuses on a simple and popular mechanism--the fixed-price mechanism. Unlike the standard…
We study an auction with $m$ identical items in a context where $n$ agents can arbitrarily commit to strategies. In general, such commitments non-trivially change the equilibria by inducing a metagame of choosing which strategies to commit…
The study of repeated interactions between a learner and a utility-maximizing optimizer has yielded deep insights into the manipulability of learning algorithms. However, existing literature primarily focuses on independent, unlinked…
The auction of a single indivisible item is one of the most celebrated problems in mechanism design with transfers. Despite its simplicity, it provides arguably the cleanest and most insightful results in the literature. When the…
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…
We study the design of prior-independent auctions in a setting with heterogeneous bidders. In particular, we consider the setting of selling to $n$ bidders whose values are drawn from $n$ independent but not necessarily identical…
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…
In a single-parameter mechanism design problem, a provider is looking to sell a service to a group of potential buyers. Each buyer $i$ has a private value $v_i$ for receiving the service and a feasibility constraint restricts which sets of…
Lately, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), i.e., uniquely discernible assets on a blockchain, have skyrocketed in popularity by addressing a broad audience. However, the typical NFT auctioning procedures are conducted in various, ad hoc ways,…