Rank-Guaranteed Auctions

Wei He; Jiangtao Li; Weijie Zhong

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arXiv · 2408.12001

Rank-Guaranteed Auctions

Wei He·Jiangtao Li·Weijie Zhong

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Abstract

We propose a combinatorial ascending auction that is "approximately" optimal, requiring minimal rationality to achieve this level of optimality, and is robust to strategic and distributional uncertainties. Specifically, the auction is rank-guaranteed, meaning that for any menu M and any valuation profile, the ex-post revenue is guaranteed to be at least as high as the highest revenue achievable from feasible allocations, taking the (|M|+ 1)th-highest valuation for each bundle as the price. Our analysis highlights a crucial aspect of combinatorial auction design, namely, the design of menus. We provide simple and approximately optimal menus in various settings.

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econ.TH cs.GT

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Wei He, Jiangtao Li, Weijie Zhong. 2024-08-21. Rank-Guaranteed Auctions. https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.12001

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