Download or read book Approximately optimal Mechanisms in Auction Design Search Theory and Matching Markets written by Hedyeh Beyhaghi and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Algorithmic mechanism design is an interdisciplinary field, concerned with the design of algorithms that are used by strategic agents. This field has applications in many real-world settings, such as auction design, search problems, and matching markets. In this thesis we study the mechanisms in these areas through lenses of simplicity and practicality. We pursue two main directions: study the strength of simple mechanisms, and improve the efficiency of practical mechanisms. In auction design, we consider a setting where a seller wants to sell many items to many buyers, and establish a tight gap between the efficiency of a simple and commonly-used auction with the complicated revenue-optimal auction. In search theory context, we introduce Pandora's problem with alternative inspections and provide the first approximately-optimal mechanism for this problem. In Pandora's problem with alternative inspections, a searcher wants to select one out of n elements whose values are unknown ahead of time. The searcher evaluates the elements one by one and can choose among different costly ways to evaluate each element, the order to evaluate the elements, and how long to continue the search, in order to maximize her utility. In matching markets, we propose theoretical models that closely capture the participant behaviors in the real world, and provide methods to optimize the already implemented mechanisms.
Download or read book Market Design written by Martin Bichler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-21 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The introduction to market design discusses the theory and empirical results relevant for the design of multi-object auctions and matching.
Download or read book Discovering Prices written by Paul Milgrom and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-23 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional economic theory studies idealized markets in which prices alone can guide efficient allocation, with no need for central organization. Such models build from Adam Smith’s famous concept of an invisible hand, which guides markets and renders regulation or interference largely unnecessary. Yet for many markets, prices alone are not enough to guide feasible and efficient outcomes, and regulation alone is not enough, either. Consider air traffic control at major airports. While prices could encourage airlines to take off and land at less congested times, prices alone do just part of the job; an air traffic control system is still indispensable to avoid disastrous consequences. With just an air traffic controller, however, limited resources can be wasted or poorly used. What’s needed in this and many other real-world cases is an auction system that can effectively reveal prices while still maintaining enough direct control to ensure that complex constraints are satisfied. In Discovering Prices, Paul Milgrom—the world’s most frequently cited academic expert on auction design—describes how auctions can be used to discover prices and guide efficient resource allocations, even when resources are diverse, constraints are critical, and market-clearing prices may not even exist. Economists have long understood that externalities and market power both necessitate market organization. In this book, Milgrom introduces complex constraints as another reason for market design. Both lively and technical, Milgrom roots his new theories in real-world examples (including the ambitious U.S. incentive auction of radio frequencies, whose design he led) and provides economists with crucial new tools for dealing with the world’s growing complex resource-allocation problems.
Download or read book Putting Auction Theory to Work written by Paul Milgrom and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-12 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive introduction to modern auction theory and its important new applications. It is written by a leading economic theorist whose suggestions guided the creation of the new spectrum auction designs. Aimed at graduate students and professionals in economics, the book gives the most up-to-date treatments of both traditional theories of 'optimal auctions' and newer theories of multi-unit auctions and package auctions, and shows by example how these theories are used. The analysis explores the limitations of prominent older designs, such as the Vickrey auction design, and evaluates the practical responses to those limitations. It explores the tension between the traditional theory of auctions with a fixed set of bidders, in which the seller seeks to squeeze as much revenue as possible from the fixed set, and the theory of auctions with endogenous entry, in which bidder profits must be respected to encourage participation.
Download or read book Market Design written by Guillaume Haeringer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-03-02 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A broad overview of market mechanisms, with an emphasis on the interplay between theory and real-life applications; examples range from eBay auctions to school choice. This book offers an introduction to market design, providing students with a broad overview of issues related to the design and analysis of market mechanisms. It defines a market as a demand and a supply, without specifying a price system or mechanism. This allows the text to analyze a broad set of situations—including such unconventional markets as college admissions and organ donation—and forces readers to pay attention to details that might otherwise be overlooked. Students often complain that microeconomics is too abstract and disconnected from reality; the study of market design shows how theory can help solve existing, real-life problems. The book focuses on the interplay between theory and applications. To keep the text as accessible as possible, special effort has been made to minimize formal description of the models while emphasizing the intuitive, with detailed explanations and resolution of examples. Appendixes offer general reviews of elements of game theory and mechanism design that are related to the themes explored in the book, presenting the basic concepts with as many explanations and illustrations as possible. The book covers topics including the basics of simple auctions; eBay auctions; Vickrey–Clarke–Groves auctions; keyword auctions, with examples from Google and Facebook; spectrum auctions; financial markets, with discussions of treasury auctions and IPOs; trading on the stock market; the basic matching model; medical match; assignment problems; probabilistic assignments; school choice; course allocation, with examples from Harvard and Wharton; and kidney exchange.
Download or read book An Introduction to Auction Theory written by Flavio M. Menezes and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2004-11-04 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Auction theory is now an important component of an economist's training. The techniques and insights gained from the study of auction theory provide a useful starting point for those who want to venture into the economics of information, mechanism design, and regulatory economics. This book provides a step-by-step, self-contained treatment of the theory of auctions. It allows students and readers with a calculus background to work through all the basic results, covering the basic independent-private-model; the effects of introducing correlation in valuations on equilibrium behaviour and the seller's expected revenue; mechanism design; and the theory of multi-object auctions.
Download or read book Auction Design with Robust Guarantees written by Peerapong Dhangwatnotai and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dissertation, we design and analyze auctions that are more practical than those in the traditional auction theory in several settings. The first setting is the search advertising market, in which the multi-keyword sponsored search mechanism is the dominant platform. In this setting, a search engine sells impressions generated from various search terms to advertisers. The main challenge is the sheer diversity of the items for sale -- the number of distinct items that an advertiser wants is so large that he cannot possibly communicate all of them to the search engine. To alleviate this communication problem, the search engine introduces a bidding language called broad match. It allows an advertiser to submit a single bid for multiple items at once. Popular models such as the GSP auction do not capture this aspect of sponsored search. We propose a model, named the broad match mechanism, for the sponsored search platform with broad match keywords. The analysis of the broad match mechanism produces many insights into the performance of the sponsored search platform. First, we identify two properties of the broad match mechanism, namely expressiveness and homogeneity, that characterize the performance of the mechanism. Second, we show that, unlike the GSP auction, the broad match mechanism does not necessarily have a pure equilibrium. Third, we analyze two variants of the broad match mechanism, the pay-per-impression variant and the pay-per-click variant. Under a common model of advertiser valuation, we show that the pay-per-click variant is more economically efficient than the pay-per-impression variant. This result justifies the prevalent use of the pay-per-click scheme in search advertising. In addition, the broad match mechanism can be viewed as an auction of which the bidding language is crucial to its performance. In the second part, we design and analyze approximately revenue-maximizing auctions in single-parameter settings. Bidders have publicly observable attributes and we assume that the valuations of bidders with the same attribute are independent draws from a common distribution. Previous works in revenue-maximizing auctions assume that the auctioneer knows the distributions from which the bidder valuations are drawn \cite{M81}. In this dissertation, we assume that the distributions are a priori unknown to the auctioneer. We show that a simple auction which does not require any knowledge of the distributions can obtain revenue comparable to what could be obtained if the auctioneer had the distributional knowledge in advance. Our most general auction has expected revenue at least a constant fraction of that of the optimal distributional-dependent auction in two settings. The first setting concerns arbitrary downward-closed single-parameter environments and valuation distributions that satisfy a standard hazard rate condition, called monotone hazard rate. In this setting, the expected revenue of our auction is improved to a constant fraction of the expected optimal welfare. In the second setting, we allow a more general class of valuation distributions, called regular distributions, but require a more restrictive environment called the matroid environment. In our results, we assume that no bidder has a unique attribute value, which is obviously necessary with unknown and attribute-dependent valuation distributions. Our auction sets a reserve price for a bidder using the valuation of another bidder who has the same attribute. Conceptually, our analysis shows that even a single sample from a distribution -- another bidder's valuation -- is sufficient information to obtain near-optimal expected revenue, even in quite general settings. In the third part, we design and analyze auctions that approximately maximize residual surplus in single-parameter settings. Residual surplus is defined to be the surplus less the sum of the bidders' payments. The guarantee of our auction is of the same type as the auctions in the second part, i.e., its expected residual surplus is a fraction of that of the optimal distributional-dependent auction. Instead of the no-unique-attribute assumption made in the second setting, in this setting we assume that the distributions of bidder valuations can be ordered, that is, the distribution of the first bidder stochastically dominates that of the second bidder and the distribution of the second bidder stochastically dominates that of the third and so on. In every downward-closed stochastic-dominance environment where the distributions of bidder valuations satisfy the monotone hazard rate condition, our auction produces residual surplus that is a $\Omega(\tfrac{1}{\log n})$ fraction of the optimal residual surplus, without taking any bid (although it makes use of the ordering), where $n$ is the number of bidders.
Download or read book Essays on Market Design and Auction Theory written by BYEONGHYEON JEONG and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation studies market design and auction theory. Chapter 1 studies the impact of school choice on segregation. It shows that the popular school choice mechanisms lead to substantially different school and residential segregation, an important and overlooked aspect of choosing among school choice mechanisms. We show that open enrollment policy in public school choice program can decrease diversity of individual schools and increase segregation depending on which student allocation mechanism is used. Without open enrollment, we study the model of location choice and show that segregation is mainly associated with income. In comparing mechanisms, we show that Boston mechanism fosters segregation more than the deferred acceptance. With open enrollment, the difference between BM and DA becomes more drastic. We show that BM can actually intensify segregation when open enrollment policy is adopted, while DA is more resilient to segregation. The deferred acceptance with multi tie breaking creates maximally diverse schools. Chapter 2 considers conventional auctions when the seller can design bid spaces. Any symmetric equilibrium in a second price auction with bid spaces can be replicated with an equilibrium in a first price auction with bid spaces, but the converse doesn't hold. First price auctions with designed bid spaces revenue dominates second price auction with designed bid spaces, and well-designed first price auction is an optimal selling mechanism. Chapter 3 studies one-to-one matching environment without transfer in the presence of incomplete information on one-side. The existing notions of stability under incomplete information are studied and two alternatives are proposed. Weak Bayesian stability requires that the beliefs of the agents are dervided from a common prior via Bayes' rule and are internally consistent with the presumption that the given matching is stable. Strong Bayesian stability refines weak Bayesian stability by requiring the beliefs of agents are also externally consistent in the sense that the beliefs are narrowed down only when there is a valid reason.
Download or read book Auction Theory written by Vijay Krishna and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2002-04-25 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Auction Theory is the standard reference on auctions and the first source of authoritative information about multi-unit auctions. The book develops the main concepts of auction theory from scratch in a self-contained and theoretically rigorous manner. It explores auctions and competitive bidding as games of incomplete information through detailed examinations of themes central to auction theory. This book complements its superb presentation of auction theory with clear and concise proofs of all results on bidding strategies, efficiency, and revenue maximization. It provides discussions on auction-related subjects, including private value auctions; the Revenue Equivalence Principle; auctions with interdependent values; the Revenue Ranking (Linkage) Principle; mechanism design with interdependent values; bidding rings; multiple object auctions; equilibrium and efficiency with private values; and nonidentical objects. This book is essential reading for graduate students taking courses on auction theory, the economics of information, or the economics of incentives, as well as for any serious student of auctions. It will also appeal to professional economists or business analysts working in contract theory, experimental economics, industrial organization, and microeconomic theory. *The standard reference on auctions and the first source of authoritative information about multi-unit auctions*Explores auctions and competitive bidding as games of incomplete information*Uses accessible, detailed examinations of themes central to auction theory
Download or read book Two Sided Matching written by Alvin E. Roth and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-06-26 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two-sided matching provides a model of search processes such as those between firms and workers in labor markets or between buyers and sellers in auctions. This book gives a comprehensive account of recent results concerning the game-theoretic analysis of two-sided matching. The focus of the book is on the stability of outcomes, on the incentives that different rules of organization give to agents, and on the constraints that these incentives impose on the ways such markets can be organized. The results for this wide range of related models and matching situations help clarify which conclusions depend on particular modeling assumptions and market conditions, and which are robust over a wide range of conditions. 'This book chronicles one of the outstanding success stories of the theory of games, a story in which the authors have played a major role: the theory and practice of matching markets ... The authors are to be warmly congratulated for this fine piece of work, which is quite unique in the game-theoretic literature.' From the Foreword by Robert Aumann
Download or read book Understanding Auctions written by Asunción Mochón and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, auctions have become an important field and many markets have designed new and sophisticated auction models to assign different types of items. The prime goal of this book is to set an organized classification of the main auction mechanisms in a way that readers can understand the importance of auction design and the advantages and drawbacks of each model. Given the relevance of the subject, there is a great volume of research about this topic. Nevertheless, most of these contributions use complex mathematical language difficult to understand for the average reader. In this book, the authors summarize the main ideas of the auction theory and explain them with simple language and plenty of examples. This book is a good starting point for any researcher interested in embracing the auction design as it also includes numerous real-world examples to engage the reader in the topic. “This book fills an important gap by making the main ideas and findings of auction research accessible.” Professor Paul Milgrom, Department of Economics, Stanford University.
Download or read book A Primer on Auction Design Management and Strategy written by David J. Salant and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-12-26 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to modeling and analyzing auctions, with the applications of game theory and auction theory to real-world auction decision making. Auctions are highly structured market transactions primarily used in thin markets (markets with few participants and infrequent transactions). In auctions, unlike most other markets, offers and counteroffers are typically made within a structure defined by a set of rigid and comprehensive rules. Because auctions are essentially complex negotiations that occur within a fully defined and rigid set of rules, they can be analyzed by game theoretic models more accurately and completely than can most other types of market transactions. This book offers a guide for modeling, analyzing, and predicting the outcomes of auctions, focusing on the application of game theory and auction theory to real-world auction design and decision making. After a brief introduction to fundamental concepts from game theory, the book explains some of the more significant results from the auction theory literature, including the revenue (or payoff) equivalence theorem, the winner's curse, and optimal auction design. Chapters on auction practice follow, addressing collusion, competition, information disclosure, and other basic principles of auction management, with some discussion of auction experiments and simulations. Finally, the book covers auction experience, with most of the discussion centered on energy and telecommunications auctions, which have become the proving ground for many new auction designs. A clear and concise introduction to auctions, auction design, and auction strategy, this Primer will be an essential resource for students, researchers, and practitioners.
Download or read book Design and Analysis of Matching and Auction Markets written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When evaluating the bids, the procurement agency must consider the trade-off between offering a richer menu of products for consumers, versus offering less variety, hoping to engage the suppliers in a more aggressive price competition. We develop a mechanism design approach to study this problem, and provide a characterization of the optimal mechanisms. This characterization allows us to quantify the optimal trade-off between product variety and price competition, in terms of suppliers' costs, products' characteristics, and consumers' characteristics. We then use the optimal mechanism as a benchmark to evaluate the performance of the Chilean government procurement agency's current implementation of FAs, used to acquire US $2 billion worth of goods per year. We show how simple modifications to the current mechanism, which increase price competition among close substitutes, can considerably improve performance.
Download or read book Twenty Lectures on Algorithmic Game Theory written by Tim Roughgarden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Computer science and economics have engaged in a lively interaction over the past fifteen years, resulting in the new field of algorithmic game theory. Many problems that are central to modern computer science, ranging from resource allocation in large networks to online advertising, involve interactions between multiple self-interested parties. Economics and game theory offer a host of useful models and definitions to reason about such problems. The flow of ideas also travels in the other direction, and concepts from computer science are increasingly important in economics. This book grew out of the author's Stanford University course on algorithmic game theory, and aims to give students and other newcomers a quick and accessible introduction to many of the most important concepts in the field. The book also includes case studies on online advertising, wireless spectrum auctions, kidney exchange, and network management.
Download or read book Auction Theory written by Pak-Sing Choi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-05-24 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This textbook provides a short introduction to auction theory through exercises with detailed answer keys. Focusing on practical examples, this textbook offers over 80 exercises that predict bidders’ equilibrium behaviour in different auction formats, along with the seller’s strategic incentives to organize one auction format over the other. The book emphasizes game-theoretic tools, so students can apply similar tools to other auction formats. Also included are several exercises based on published articles, with the model reduced to its main elements and the question divided into several easy-to-answer parts. Little mathematical background in algebra and calculus is assumed, and most algebraic steps and simplifications are provided, making the text ideal for upper undergraduate and graduate students. The book begins with a discussion of second-price auctions, which can be studied without using calculus, and works through progressively more complicated auction scenarios: first-price auctions, all-pay auctions, third-price auctions, the Revenue Equivalence principle, common-value auctions, multi-unit auctions, and procurement auctions. Exercises in each chapter are ranked according to their difficulty, with a letter (A-C) next to the exercise title, which allows students to pace their studies accordingly. The authors also offer a list of suggested exercises for each chapter, for instructors teaching at varying levels: undergraduate, Masters, Ph.D. Providing a practical, customizable approach to auction theory, this textbook is appropriate for students of economics, finance, and business administration. This book may also be used for related classes such as game theory, market design, economics of information, contract theory, or topics in microeconomics.
Download or read book Auctions written by Paul Klemperer and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governments use them to sell everything from oilfields to pollution permits, and to privatize companies; consumers rely on them to buy baseball tickets and hotel rooms, and economic theorists employ them to explain booms and busts. Auctions make up many of the world's most important markets; and this book describes how auction theory has also become an invaluable tool for understanding economics. Auctions: Theory and Practice provides a non-technical introduction to auction theory, and emphasises its practical application. Although there are many extremely successful auction markets, there have also been some notable fiascos, and Klemperer provides many examples. He discusses the successes and failures of the one-hundred-billion dollar "third-generation" mobile-phone license auctions; he, jointly with Ken Binmore, designed the first of these. Klemperer also demonstrates the surprising power of auction theory to explain seemingly unconnected issues such as the intensity of different forms of industrial competition, the costs of litigation, and even stock trading 'frenzies' and financial crashes. Engagingly written, the book makes the subject exciting not only to economics students but to anyone interested in auctions and their role in economics.
Download or read book Market Design written by Christoph Schwaiger and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
