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arXiv · 2408.04555

Meta-mechanisms for Combinatorial Auctions over Social Networks

Yuan Fang·Mengxiao Zhang·Jiamou Liu·Bakh Khoussainov
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Abstract

Recently there has been a large amount of research designing mechanisms for auction scenarios where the bidders are connected in a social network. Different from the existing studies in this field that focus on specific auction scenarios e.g. single-unit auction and multi-unit auction, this paper considers the following question: is it possible to design a scheme that, given a classical auction scenario and a mechanism $\tilde{\mathcal{M}}$ suited for it, produces a mechanism in the network setting that preserves the key properties of $\tilde{\mathcal{M}}$? To answer this question, we design meta-mechanisms that provide a uniform way of transforming mechanisms from classical models to mechanisms over networks and prove that the desirable properties are preserved by our meta-mechanisms. Our meta-mechanisms provide solutions to combinatorial auction scenarios in the network setting: (1) combinatorial auction with single-minded buyers and (2) combinatorial auction with general monotone valuation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that designs combinatorial auctions over a social network.

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Yuan Fang, Mengxiao Zhang, Jiamou Liu, Bakh Khoussainov. 2024-08-08. Meta-mechanisms for Combinatorial Auctions over Social Networks. https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.04555

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