Optimal and Efficient Parametric Auctions
Consider a seller who seeks to provide service to a collection of interested parties, subject to feasibility constraints on which parties may be simultaneously served. Assuming that a distribution is known on the value of each party for service—arguably a strong assumption—Myerson's seminal wor...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
| Published: |
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
2014
|
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/90403 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9156-2428 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5451-0490 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0816-4064 |
| _version_ | 1826206682003275776 |
|---|---|
| author | Azar, Pablo Daniel Micali, Silvio Weinberg, S. Matthew Daskalakis, Konstantinos |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Azar, Pablo Daniel Micali, Silvio Weinberg, S. Matthew Daskalakis, Konstantinos |
| author_sort | Azar, Pablo Daniel |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Consider a seller who seeks to provide service to a collection of interested parties, subject to feasibility constraints on which parties may be simultaneously served. Assuming that a distribution is known on the value of each party for service—arguably a strong assumption—Myerson's seminal work provides revenue optimizing auctions [12]. We show instead that, for very general feasibility constraints, only knowledge of the median of each party's value distribution, or any other quantile of these distributions, or approximations thereof, suffice for designing simple auctions that simultaneously approximate both the optimal revenue and the optimal welfare. Our results apply to all downward-closed feasibility constraints under the assumption that the underlying, unknown value distributions are monotone hazard rate, and to all matroid feasibility constraints under the weaker assumption of regularity of the underlying distributions. Our results jointly generalize the single-item results obtained by Azar and Micali [2] on parametric auctions, and Daskalakis and Pierrakos [6] for simultaneously approximately optimal and efficient auctions. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:36:36Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/90403 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:36:36Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/904032022-09-28T14:59:21Z Optimal and Efficient Parametric Auctions Azar, Pablo Daniel Micali, Silvio Weinberg, S. Matthew Daskalakis, Konstantinos Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Azar, Pablo Daniel Micali, Silvio Daskalakis, Konstantinos Weinberg, S. Matthew Consider a seller who seeks to provide service to a collection of interested parties, subject to feasibility constraints on which parties may be simultaneously served. Assuming that a distribution is known on the value of each party for service—arguably a strong assumption—Myerson's seminal work provides revenue optimizing auctions [12]. We show instead that, for very general feasibility constraints, only knowledge of the median of each party's value distribution, or any other quantile of these distributions, or approximations thereof, suffice for designing simple auctions that simultaneously approximate both the optimal revenue and the optimal welfare. Our results apply to all downward-closed feasibility constraints under the assumption that the underlying, unknown value distributions are monotone hazard rate, and to all matroid feasibility constraints under the weaker assumption of regularity of the underlying distributions. Our results jointly generalize the single-item results obtained by Azar and Micali [2] on parametric auctions, and Daskalakis and Pierrakos [6] for simultaneously approximately optimal and efficient auctions. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Microsoft Research (Faculty Fellowship) National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award CCF-0953960 (CAREER)) National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CCF-1101491) National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship 2014-09-26T17:06:00Z 2014-09-26T17:06:00Z 2013 2012-10 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/ConferencePaper 978-1-61197-251-1 978-1-61197-310-5 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/90403 Azar, Pablo, Silvio Micali, Constantinos Daskalakis, and S. Matthew Weinberg. “Optimal and Efficient Parametric Auctions.” Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (January 6, 2013): 596–604. © SIAM https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9156-2428 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5451-0490 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0816-4064 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1137/1.9781611973105.43 Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SODA '13 Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. application/pdf Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics SIAM |
| spellingShingle | Azar, Pablo Daniel Micali, Silvio Weinberg, S. Matthew Daskalakis, Konstantinos Optimal and Efficient Parametric Auctions |
| title | Optimal and Efficient Parametric Auctions |
| title_full | Optimal and Efficient Parametric Auctions |
| title_fullStr | Optimal and Efficient Parametric Auctions |
| title_full_unstemmed | Optimal and Efficient Parametric Auctions |
| title_short | Optimal and Efficient Parametric Auctions |
| title_sort | optimal and efficient parametric auctions |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/90403 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9156-2428 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5451-0490 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0816-4064 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT azarpablodaniel optimalandefficientparametricauctions AT micalisilvio optimalandefficientparametricauctions AT weinbergsmatthew optimalandefficientparametricauctions AT daskalakiskonstantinos optimalandefficientparametricauctions |