相关论文: Optimal Pricing is Hard
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 the problem of computing optimal prices for a version of the Product-Mix auction with budget constraints. In contrast to the ``standard'' Product-Mix auction, the objective is to maximize revenue instead of social welfare. We prove…
We study the sample complexity of learning revenue-optimal multi-item auctions. We obtain the first set of positive results that go beyond the standard but unrealistic setting of item-independence. In particular, we consider settings where…
We explore the approximation power of deterministic obviously strategy-proof mechanisms in auctions, where the objective is welfare maximization. A trivial ascending auction on the grand bundle guarantees an approximation of $\min\{m,n\}$…
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…
We consider a model of bilateral trade with private values. The value of the buyer and the cost of the seller are jointly distributed. The true joint distribution is unknown to the designer, however, the marginal distributions of the value…
We study the communication complexity of incentive compatible auction-protocols between a monopolist seller and a single buyer with a combinatorial valuation function over $n$ items. Motivated by the fact that revenue-optimal auctions are…
Myerson derived a simple and elegant solution to the single-parameter revenue-maximization problem in his seminal work on optimal auction design assuming the usual model of quasi-linear utilities. In this paper, we consider a slight…
It is well-known that optimal (i.e., revenue-maximizing) selling mechanisms in multidimensional type spaces may involve randomization. We obtain conditions under which deterministic mechanisms are optimal for selling two identical,…
We consider the classical mathematical economics problem of {\em Bayesian optimal mechanism design} where a principal aims to optimize expected revenue when allocating resources to self-interested agents with preferences drawn from a known…
We consider the revenue maximization problem of a monopolist via a non-Myersonian approach that could generalize to multiple items and multiple buyers. Although such an approach does not lead to any closed-form solution of the problem, it…
We consider the computational complexity of computing Bayes-Nash equilibria in first-price auctions, where the bidders' values for the item are drawn from a general (possibly correlated) joint distribution. We show that when the values and…
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…
We consider the problem of the optimization of bidding strategies in prior-dependent revenue-maximizing auctions, when the seller fixes the reserve prices based on the bid distributions. Our study is done in the setting where one bidder is…
We investigate revenue guarantees for auction mechanisms in a model where a distribution is specified for each bidder, but only some of the distributions are correct. The subset of bidders whose distribution is correctly specified…
We study revenue maximization by deterministic mechanisms for the simplest case for which Myerson's characterization does not hold: a single seller selling two items, with independently distributed values, to a single additive buyer. We…
Retailers have significant potential to improve recommendations through strategic bundling and pricing. By taking into account different types of customers and their purchasing decisions, retailers can better accommodate customer…
We study revenue maximization in multi-item multi-bidder auctions under the natural item-independence assumption - a classical problem in Multi-Dimensional Bayesian Mechanism Design. One of the biggest challenges in this area is developing…
We consider the Item Pricing problem for revenue maximization in the limited supply setting, where a single seller with $n$ items caters to $m$ buyers with unknown subadditive valuation functions who arrive in a sequence. The seller sets…
Most recent papers addressing the algorithmic problem of allocating advertisement space for keywords in sponsored search auctions assume that pricing is done via a first-price auction, which does not realistically model the Generalized…